THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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fy  ''  *^ 


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sr 


IMPRESSIONS 

OF 

LONDON   SOCIAL  LIFE. 


IMPRESSIONS 


OF 


LONDON  SOCIAL  LIFE 


WITH   OTHER  PAPERS 


SUGGESTED   BY  AN   ENGLISH   RESIDENCE. 


BY 

E.   S.   NADAL. 


NEW    YORK: 
SCRIBNER,  ARMSTRONG   &   CO. 

1875- 


COPYRIGHT,    1875, 

BY 
SCRIBNER,    ARMSTRONG    &    CO. 


JOHN  F.  TROW  &  Sow, 

•PRINTERS  AND  HOOKBINOERS, 

005-313  East  iittt  St., 

NEW  VUKK. 


TO    THAT    CHIVALROUS    GENTLEMAN    AND    HONEST    FRIEND, 

JUDGE    JOHN     P.     O'SULLIVAN, 
i  btQ  to  Unistnbt  this  little  §aak, 

WITH  THE  ASSURANCE  THAT  IN  WHATEVER  PART  OF  TH  a  EARTH 

HIS  FEET  NOW   STRAY  OR  TARRY,    HE  BEARS  WITH    HIM 

THE  WARM   RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE  AUTHOR. 


1293856 


PREFACE. 

THIS  volume  of  Essays  records  the  impressions 
received  during  a  residence  in  London,  Where  the 
Author  was  for  some  eighteen  months  a  secretary 
of  legation.  It  also  describes  things  here  as  they 
appear  to  one  who  returns  to  this  country  after 
a  stay  in  England.  A  number  of  these  papers 
have  already  been  printed  in  American  periodicals. 

NEW  YORK:  January,  1875, 


CONTENTS. 


L 

FACE 

IMPRESSIONS  OF  LONDON  SOCIAL  LIFE     •       •       •       •        i 

II. 

ENGLISH  SUNDAYS  AND  LONDON  CHURCHES    .       .        .      33 

III. 
Two  VISITS  TO  OXFORD    ..••••.64 

IV. 
THE  BRITISH  UPPER  CLASS  IN  FICTION  .       .       ;       .      90 

Y. 
PRESUMPTION     ••••••••*     105 

VI. 

ENGLISH  COURT  FESTIVITIES  .  no 


VII. 
ENGLISH  TRADITION  AND  THE  ENGLISH  FUTURE    .        .     131 

VIII. 
CHILDHOOD  AND  ENGLISH  TRADITION      .       •       .  141 


x  Contents. 

IX. 

PAGE 

THE  DANCING  SCHOOL  IN  TAVISTOCK  SQUARE        .       .     148 

X. 

CONTRASTS  OF  SCENERY    .       .       .       •       •       •       ,161 

XI. 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON  WINTERS  .        »       .        •        .173 

XII. 
THE  EVENING  CALL  ....       i       •        ..176 

XIII. 
OUR  LATEST  NOTIONS  OF  REPUBLICS       .       •        .        .     186 

XIV. 
ENGLISH  CONSERVATIVE  TEMPER      .       .       .       .       .    193 

XV. 

ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN  NEWSPAPER-WRITING        .       .    197 

XVL 
AMERICANS  ABROAD  .........    209 

XVII. 
SOCIETY  IN  NEW  YORK,  AND  FICTION     .       •       .       .217 


Some  Impressions  of  London 
Social  Life. 


I  WISH  to  record  some  impressions  of  London 
social  life,  and  of  that  particular  phase  of  it  we 
call  society.  I  may  dwell  upon  some  faults 
which,  I  should  explain,  are  shared  by  society 
in  all  times  and  places  —  indeed,  are  quite  in- 
separable from  it,  while  others  to  be  described 
are  the  peculiarities  not  so  much  of  the  country 
as  of  the  age.  Whatever  be  the  defects  and 
drawbacks  of  society,  scholars  and  thinkers 
would  wish  to  establish  something  like  it,  did 
they  not  see  that,  in  many  respects,  that  already 
established  was  unfit  for  their  uses.  Were  it 
possible,  they  would  want  some  common  ground 
where  men  and  women  might  meet  to  talk 
and  see  and  be  seen.  What  they,  with  their 


2  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

very  high  intentions,  would  desire,  the  rest 
of  us  would  find  enjoyable.  When  the  gods 
had  brought  man  into  existence,  they  were  still 
puzzled  by  the  formidable  problem  of  how  he 
was  to  be  amused.  It  was  supposed  that  some- 
thing more  extended  and  complex  than  the 
original  race  would  be  required  for  that  pur- 
pose ;  and  numerous  plans  were  submitted  to  the 
council  of  the  gods,  and  were  one  by  one  rejected. 
At  length  one  Olympian  inventor  arose  and  sug- 
gested that  the  members  of  the  new  race  should 
find  their  amusement  in  looking  at  each  other. 
This  novel  and  audacious  suggestion,  though  at 
first  received  with  merriment  and  wonder,  was 
finally  adopted,  and  on  trial  was  discovered  to 
work  admirably.  It  has  certainly  since  proved 
itself  to  be  the  completest  of  all  inventions,  at 
once  the  most  perfect  and  the  simpfest  and 
most  labour-saving. 

I  have  often  wondered  if  something  like  the 
Athenian  Agora  could  not  be  devised.  One  of 
the  great  features  of  Athens,  I  fancy,  was  the 
active  intellectual  interest  the  people  took  in 
their  society  as  a  spectacle.  The  liveliest 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  3 

curiosity  everywhere  pervaded  the  community, 
and  the  stimulus  of  a  public  place  of  resort 
must  have  been  great.  Hither  came  men  of  all 
ranks  and  professions — merchants,  poets,  soldiers, 
sophists,  and  statesmen.  When  Socrates  or 
Cleon  passed,  every  pedlar  had  his  jibe  and 
every  huckster  his  bit  of  scandal.  The  whole 
market-place  was  full  of  mirth,  movement, 
gaiety,  gossip,  and  curiosity.  There  is,  at  least, 
one  modern  institution  which  has  some  points 
of  similarity  to  the  Agora :  I  mean  London 
society.  The  resemblance  is  one  more  of  form 
than  of  character.  It  is  like  it  in  the  fact  that 
it  brings  numbers  of  people  into  association,  or 
rather  contiguity,  and  that  in  it  we  see  con- 
stantly all  the  noted  people  of  the  day.  Here 
the  likeness  ends  :  the  life  and  variety  are  not 
there. 

Yet,  easy  as  it  is  to  find  fault  with,  London 
society  is  far  the  most  perfect  thing  of  the  kind 
in  the  world,  and  it  must  be  a  dull  man  who 
would  fail  to  extract  amusement  and  pleasure 
from  it.  Were  it  a  little  less  hard  and  rude,  and 
were  there  a  little  more  liberty  for  individualities, 


[t 

one  might  spend  a  lifetime  in  it  with  profit. 
As  a  spectacle,  it  is  valuable  for  its  profuseness, 
its  pomp  of  life,  the  beautiful  women  and  famous 
men  we  see.  There  is,  moreover,  something  of 
moral  education  in  it.  We  get  a  certain  strength 
— of  a  kind,  indeed,  which  we  should  not  take 
long  to  acquire,  and,  having  acquired,  should 
not  take  a  lifetime  to  practise,  but  still  a  kind 
of  strength — silent  resistance,  and  ease  in  the 
presence  of  people  who  are  indifferent  and 
critical.  The  dowagers  are  the  persons  in  con- 
versing with  whom  one  experiences  the  greatest 
growth  of  character.  Some  large  and  listless 
mother,  whose  eyes  are  following  the  fortunes 
of  her  charges  over  the  field,  and  who  has 
asked  you  for  the  fourth  time  the  question  you 
have  already  answered  for  the  third — to  go  on 
discoursing  to  such  a  person  as  calmly  and 
fluently  as  Cato  does  to  the  universe  is  a 
great  and  difficult  thing.  There  is  not  a  pleasure 
in  it,  nor  indeed  a  rapture,  but  there  is  real 
growth  and  building  up  in  a  certain  amount 
of  it. 

But  the  moral  education  of  society  is  scarcely  its 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  5 

most  important-,  service.  There  is  a  large  class  of 
men  to  whom  success  in  it  is  the  main  object 
of  life.  To  them  it  furnishes  a  profession,  and 
one  in  which  they  are  sure  in  time  to  succeed. 
He  who  in  the  bloom  of  youth  is  bidden  to 
dance  at  some  great  lady's  ball  is  sure,  with 
average  luck  and  persistence,  to  go  to  breakfast 
in  his  toupee.  It  gives  the  swell  something  to 
live  for.  When  he  has  attained  the  Marquis 
of  This,  the  Duke  of  That  shines  yet  ahead  of 
him.  The  way  is  plain,  and  there  is  no  limit 
to  the  possibilities  of  its  extension.  From  round 
to  round  of  the  Jacob's  ladder  of  fashion  the 
aspiring  climber  may  ascend  indefinitely.  There 
is  always  something  a  little  ahead.  To  tread 
all  the  ways  of  Mayfair,  to  sound  all  the  depths 
and  shoals  of  Belgravia,  were  indeed  a  hopeless 
task.  But  it  has  many  sorts  of  uses  for  many 
sorts  of  people.  Mothers  there  exhibit  their 
marriageable  wares.  Politicians  put  their  heads 
together.  The  Earl  of  Barchester  asks  a  Cabinet 
minister  to  appoint  a  friend.  But  the  old  gentle- 
men who  go  to  look  on  and  take  their  daughters 
get  the  most  out  of  it.  It  is  especially  pleasant 


6  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

for  them  by  contrast  with  the  treatment  they 
receive  in  this  country.  Here  the  fathers  of 
families  creep  about  among  their  daughters' 
suitors  in  a  very  abject  and  humble  manner. 
"What  talk  is  there  of  fathers  when  there  is 
such  a  man  as  Orlando  ? "  The  old  men  in 
England  are  much  more  defiant  and  unmanage- 
able. They  do  not  strike  their  flags  to  the 
young  ones,  as  is  their  habit  with  us.  They 
confront  age  with  fine  clothes,  the  locks  right 
from  the  hand  of  the  hair-dresser,  and  the  air 
of  success  and  authority.  The  condition  of  an 
Englishman  who  has  grown  grey  in  honours,  who 
has  a  star  and  a  decoration  and  the  health  and 
vanity  to  wear  them  properly,  is  by  no  means 
an  unhappy  one.  (Decorations  should  be  given 
to  suit  complexions  ;  kings  and  colleges  should 
award  blue  ribbons  to  blond  men  and  red  ribbons 
to  dark  men.)  If,  besides  his  fortunate  accidents, 
he  has  humour,  sensibility,  and  an  individuality, 
his  is  really  an  enviable  lot.  In  the  most  rigid 
of  societies,  wealth,  rank,  and  success  clear  a  way 
for  individuality.  They  make  one  elbow-room. 
An  eccentric  clerk  in  the  Admiralty  would  very 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  7 

soon  find  himself  on  the  curbstone  ;  the  eccentric 
nobleman,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  popular  personage, 
and  has  a  recognised  position  in  all  the  novels. 
Even  hard  and  supercilious  people  are  not  apt  to 
question  the  wit  and  manners  of  one  whom  kings 
and    learned   societies    have   indorsed.      A    stare 
need  not  make  him  check  his  humour.     He  may 
be  a  strong  and  a  natural  person,  if  he  chooses. 
It   used   to   delight   me  to   watch  one    old    man 
who   had  run  a  career  in  literature  and  politics, 
and  to  whom  the  world  had  given  all   its  good 
things.     He   protected   himself  with  the   best  of 
Poole's  tailoring.      He  wore  a   decoration  which 
suited   his   complexion   perfectly.     He  was   none 
of  your  cravens.       He   met  old   age   with  hand 
gaily  extended  in   the  jauntiest,  boldest  way   in 
the  world.     With  a  bearing  humorously  perverse 
and   imperious,  with  a   pair  of  yellow-grey  eyes 
flashing  over  his  eagle  beak,  he  moved  through 
the  throng  ;  shaking  hands  pleasantly  with  many, 
complimenting    the   mammas,   and  hectoring  the 
maidens,  whose  conversation  he  corrected  with  mock 
severity,  and  whom   he  cautioned   against  slang. 
Such  of  the  young  ladies  as  received  his  reproof 


8  Some  Impressions  of  [L 

demurely,  he  looked  down  on  with  approbation ; 
while  those  who  were  saucy  pleased  quite  as  well, 
as  they  gave  him  opportunity  for  more  extended 
reprimand.  If  age  ever  retains  the  vanity, 
humour,  and  kindness  of  youth,  this  old  man  must 
have  had  a  pleasant  time.  The  only  drawback 
is,  that  the  people  who  to-night  are  flattered  by 
his  smile  may,  a  week  hence,  be  reading  his 
obituary  with  that  contempt  we  instinctively 
feel  for  a  man  who  has  just  ceased  to  live. 
The  death  of  a  successful  man  of  the  world 
affects  our  way  of  thinking  of  him  much  as  any 
other  reverse  in  his  affairs — the  loss  of  his 
fortune,  for  instance,  or  the  favour  of  his  party. 
We  cannot  help  reflecting  that  he  must  now 
take  in  a  little  sail,  that  he  must  in  future  abate 
a  little  his  demand  upon  society. 

But  for  the  average  man  the  very  last  thing 
society  does  is  to  give  him  an  opportunity  to 
express  himself.  Self-suppression  is  the  lesson 
it  inculcates  by  precept  and  by  very  strong 
example.  The  man  of  society  must  imitate  the 
patience  of  the  processes  of  nature.  He  must 
act  as  though  he  intended  to  go  out  for  ever, 


L]  London  Social  Life.  g 

and  was  in  no  hurry  to  get  the  good  of  it.  No 
wise  man  attempts  to  hurry  London  society. 
The  people  who  compose  it  never  hurry.  But 
if  the  man  of  society  be  unselfish  and  be  careful 
to  retain  his  sanity,  its  chief  good  is  in  what  it 
offers  him  to  look  at — the  carriages  flashing 
back  and  forth  at  the  dinner-hour,  looking  like 
caskets  or  Christmas-boxes  with  ^the  most 
wonderful  lining  and  furniture  (the  drapery  and 
lace  almost  floating  out  of  the  windows),  the  balls 
and  parties,  the  acres  of  fair-armed  British 
maidens  through  which  he  may  wander  as  in  a 
wilderness,  the  odours  of  the  midnight  gardens, 
the  breath  of  the  dawn,  and  the  first  flush  of  sun- 
rise over  Hyde  Park  as  the  drowsy  cabman 
wheels  him  homeward  and  to  bed.  Every  spring 
he  may  watch  for  the  reappearance  of  some  queen 
of  the  last  season,  as  for  the  coming  of  the 
flowers.  To  a  mind  capable  of  pleasure  it  must 
often  be  a  joyous  and  delightful  spectacle,  and 
always  an  amusing  one.  But  if  a  man  be  subject 
to  feelings  of  pique  and  envy,  and  allow  fortunes 
better  than  his  own  to  make  him  wretched,  there 
could  hardly  be  a  worse  place  for  him.  I  knew 


io  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

one  man,  foolish  fellow !  who,  instead  of  giving 
himself  up  to  the  admiration  of  the  ladies,  and 
the  graces  and  peculiarities  of  the  dancers,  had 
held  aloof  and  had  been  unhappy  because  people 
took  so  little  notice  of  him.  He  told  me  that, 
when  he  saw  other  men  successful  and  smiled 
upon,  he  used  to  stand  back  and  try  to  look 
"  devilish  deserving."  "  Wisdom  and  worth  were 
all  he  had."  "  I  have  since  found  out,"  he  re- 
marked, "what  a  very  poor  expedient  it  was. 
For  success  in  society,  either  here  or  anywhere 
else,  I  had  as  lief  be  accused  of  forgery  as  of 
modest  merit/' 

I  found  everywhere  an  excessive  respect  of  the 
individual  for  the  sentiment  of  the  mass — I  mean 
in  regard  to  behaviour.  In  matters  of  opinion 
there  is  greater  latitude  than  with  us.  Now- 
adays a  man  in  England  may  believe  anything 
he  chooses ;  the  reason  being,  I  suppose,  that 
beliefs  have  not  much  root  or  practical  im- 
portance. Authority  seems  to  have  left  the 
domain  of  thought  and  literature,  and  to  have 
invaded  that  of  manners.  Of  the  two  sorts  of 
tyranny,  I  think  I  should  prefer  the  first  I 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  n 

should  rather  be  compelled  to  write  my  poetry 
in  pentameters,  and  to  speak  with  respect  of 
the  Church  and  the  Government,  than  to  be  for- 
ever made  to  behave  as  other  people  dictate.  I 
know  Englishmen  do  not  accept  this  as  true  of 
themselves.  One  of  them,  to  whom  I  had  hinted 
something  of  the  sort,  said,  "  Oh,  I  don't  know ; 
we  do  about  as  we  please."  Precisely ;  but  they 
have  lived  so  constantly  in  the  eyes  of  other 
people,  have  got  so  used  to  conforming,  that 
they  never  think  of  wanting  to  do  what  society 
would  disapprove  of.  They  have  been  so  in  the 
habit  of  subduing  whatever  native  individuality 
they  possess,  that  they  have  at  last  got  rid  of  it. 
Of  course,  it  would  be  impossible  to  make  them 
believe  this.  They  mistake  their  inattention,  the 
hostile  front  they  present  to  the  world,  and  their 
indifference  to  the  strictures  of  foreigners  when 
they  are  abroad,  for  real  independence  and  a 
self-reliant  adherence  to  nature.  But  there 
seems  to  me  to  be  something  conventional 
even  about  the  rude  and  lounging  manners 
of  which  they  are  so  proud.  It  is  like  the 
"  stand-at-ease  "  of  soldiers.  It  would  be  highly 


12  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

improper  and  contrary  to  orders  to  do  anything 
else. 

Englishmen  appeared  to  me  to  be  criticising 
themselves  away.  It  is  not  only  among  Englishmen 
of  fashion,  nor  solely  in  England,  that  this  is  the 
case.  The  age  everywhere  partakes  of  it.  It 
has  come  to  attach  great  importance  to  proper 
externals,  to  seemliness,  to  a  dignified  and  har- 
monious behaviour.  What  unexceptionable  people 
in  their  private  lives  are  the  writers  of  the  day! 
Artists  used  to  be  envious  and  backbiting :  if 
they  retain  such  feelings  at  present,  they  are 
certainly  not  candid.  It  cannot  be  that  the 
world  has  made  such  progress  in  a  few  years  as 
to  have  quite  got  rid  of  the  passions  of  spite 
and  envy.  We  fear  the  age  has  caught  cold 
and  the  disease  has  been  driven  in.  Certainly 
we  have  come  to  devote  an  exceedingly  parti- 
cular and  microscopic  care  to  externals ;  we  give 
such  attention  to  our  walk  and  conversation, 
we  are  so  careful  to  avoid  faults  and  littlenesses 
of  demeanour,  that  we  seem  to  have  acquired 
some  sort  of  negative  Puritanism  or  Pharisaism. 
This  is  true  of  ourselves,  and  it  is  true  of  all 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  13 

educated  English  people  ;  but  the  disease  reaches 
its  extremest  form  among  Englishmen  of  fashion 
and  quality.  I  once  asked  one  of  the  kindest 
and  cleverest  of  them  I  knew,  "  Can  a  young 
man  in  this  country  read  poetry  to  the  ladies — 
not  his  own,  of  course,  but  out  of  a  book  ? " 
"No,"  said  he,  "that  would  be  rather  com-pro- 
mis-ing "  (shaking  his  head  and  pronouncing 
the  word  slowly).  On  reflection,  I  did  not 
remember  having  done  that  thing  myself  for 
some  years,  but  I  hardly  had  it  classified  as  one 
of  the  things  not  to  be  done  under  any  circum- 
stances. 

In  this  very  great  self-consciousness  and  doubt 
as  to  what  to  say  and  do,  it  was  an  advantage 
to  have  some  particular  tone  set  and  the  range 
of  conversation  narrowed  within  some  well- 
understood  limits.  By  this,  language,  as  a 
medium  of  expression,  is  abolished,  and  becomes 
a  means  of  getting  along  comfortably  with 
friends.  Certain  things  are  set  apart  as  good 
for  men  to  converse  upon — the  races,  horse- 
flesh, politics,  anything  in  short,  providing  it  is 
not  discussed  in  a  definite  or  original  manner. 


14  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

No  man  should  say  anything  which  might  not  be 
very  well  said  by  any  one  else.  Each  man  has 
an  infallible  guide  in  the  rest.  He  must  set  his 
clock  by  them,  and  regulate  it  carefully  when 
it  inclines  to  go  faster.  The  following  is  a 
simple  and  easily-understood  specimen  of  a 
club  conversation  : — 

First  Speaker.  "Are  you  going  to  Aldershot 
to-morrow?" 

Second  Speaker.     "  No." 

Here  follows  a  pause  of  several  minutes. 

First  Speaker.  "  Why  aren't  you  going  to 
Al Jershot  to-morrow  ?  " 

Second  Speaker.     "O,  I  hate  Aldershot." 

Here  follows  a  pause  of  longer  duration,  during 
which  the  first  speaker  reads  over  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette  for  the  third  tims. 

Second  Speaker.  "Waiter,  bring  me  gin  and 
seltzer." 

This  one  might  call  the  unit  of  a  club  conver- 
sation, upon  which  more  elaborate  remark  may 
be  superadded  at  will. 

We  are  of  course  always  bound  to  pitch  our 
voices  to  the  ears  of  those  around  us.  As  a 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  15 

rule,  we  must  expect  people  to  talk  about  trivial 
matters ;  it  would  be  a  great  bore  if  they  did 
otherwise.  But  now  and  then  we  need  not  be 
surprised  at  a  little  genuine  laughter  or  a  hearty 
greeting  between  friends.  But  in  the  clubs, 
from  what  I  saw,  there  rarely  seemed  to  be  any 
abandon  or  heartiness.  There  was  roseate  youth 
with  the  finest  health,  with  beauty,  with  a 
flower  in  the  button-hole,  with  horses  to  ride 
in  the  Row,  with  fine  raiment  and  sumptuous 
living  every  day,  with  the  smiles  of  mammas  and 
the  shy  adoration  of  the  maidens.  Yet  I  have 
seen  old  men  who  seemed  far  more  happily  self- 
forgetful  and  with  more  enthusiasm  for  enjoy- 
ment. The  young  men  have  deteriorated  from 
the  energy  of  their  fathers  of  forty  years  ago, 
who  must  have  been  a  very  amusing  class  of 
men.  The  strong  pressure  of  public  sentiment 
prevents  these  young  men  from  acquiring  the 
old  physical  vigour  and  freedom  of  the  British 
upper  class  ;  and  as  they  have  no  task  set  them 
they  are  driven  unavoidably  into  dulness.  They 
never  swear,  or  rarely.  The  "  demmes "  and 
"  egads  "  of  their  ancestors  are  quite  out  of  em- 


1 6  Some  Impressions  of  [L 

ployment  They  even  sin  with  a  certain  decorum. 
For  instance,  it  is  very  "  bad  form "  to  dance 
with  the  ladies  at  the  casinos,  though  there  is 
no  impropriety  in  leaving  those  places  in  their 
company.  The  few  men  who  are  literary  and 
intellectual  make,  perhaps,  the  weakest  im- 
pression. The  thin  wash  of  opinion  which  forms 
their  conversation  evaporates,  and  leaves  a  very 
slight  sediment.  They  have  that  contagious 
weariness  I  have  noticed  in  the  agricultural 
population  along  the  water-courses  of  Illinois 
and  Missouri.  In  the  latter  it  is  the  result  of 
fever  and  ague,  and  the  long  eating  of  half-baked 
bread.  The  voices  of  those  people  seemed  to 
struggle  up  from  a  region  below  their  lungs,  and 
in  them  the  peculiarity,  besides  wearying,  in- 
tensely repelled  and  disgusted.  In  men  as 
charmingly  dressed  and  beautifully  clean  as 
these  Englishmen,  the  offensive  quality  was 
missed,  but  there  was  the  same  weariness  and  a 
vapidity  that  inoculated  and  subdued  you.  There 
often  seemed  to  me  an  effeminate  sound  in  the 
talk,  not  only  of  the  intellectual  sort,  but 
even  of  the  faster  men.  Should  the  ghosts 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  17 

of  their  uproarious  ancestors  ever  rustle  through 
those  halls  of  Pall  Mall  and  St.  James's  Street, 
they  must  marvel,  I  fancy,  to  see  the  young 
bloods  of  the  present  sitting  about  and  compar- 
ing experiences  of  vaccination  with  the  minute- 
ness of  old  ladies  at  a  religious  tea-party. 

It  is  an  old  folly,  it  may  be  said,  that  of  de- 
crying the  present,  and  I  may  be  reminded  that 
most  men  are  human,  no  matter  what  the  age 
or  the  country  in  which  they  live.  There  is 
truth  in  that ;  but  we  may  easily  see  how  very 
different  men  may  be  whom  centuries  divide, 
when  we  consider  that  most  important  fact  of 
the  human  mind — mood.  How  diverse  are  the 
thoughts  and  passions  which  rule  the  fast  fol- 
lowing movements  of  a  single  human  life !  How 
diverse  the  lives  of  individual  men  !  How  widely 
separate  from  our  own  may  be  the  feelings  of 
men  between  whom  and  ourselves  many  years 
intervene,  and  of  whom  no  living  soul  remains 
to  speak.  There  was  a  day  when  people  were 
less  suspicious  of  each  other  than  nowadays, 
when  they  were  freer  and  far  brighter.  Talk  like 
that  of  which  we  read  in  Bos  well's  "  Life  of 


1 8  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

Johnson,"  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  and  the  "Set- 
wyn  Correspondence"  is  not  heard  now.  I  have 
noticed  the  fluency  of  some  very  charming  old 
ladies.  They  address  you  with  an  unhesitating 
talkativeness,  which  is  not  of  this  time.  They 
have  never  asked  themselves,  "  How  did  I  appear 
when  I  said  this?"  or  "Was  not  that  gesture 
or  that  expression  of  countenance'  peculiar  ?"  It 
would  seem,  then,  that  the  monologue  which 
is  so  characteristic  of  the  novel  of  fifty  years 
ago  was  no  invention  of  the  novelist,  but  that 
people  really  talked  in  that  way.  They  did 
-  not  skirmish  behind  wary  short  sentences  as 
do  the  lovers  in  Mr.  Trollope's  books.  Why, 
if  you  proposed  to  one  of  the  young  ladies 
of  that  period,  she  replied  in  a  speech  covering 
full  a  page  and  a  half  of  Miss  Edgeworth,  per- 
fectly fluent  and  grammatical,  every  word  of 
which  could  be  parsed  from  beginning  to  end. 
If  she  rejected  you,  the  discourse  was  sure  to 
contain  many  and  most  irreproachable  moral 
sentiments.  Yet  those  very  young  ladies  upon 
occasions  could  very  nearly  swear.  On  the  de- 
corous pages  of  Miss  Austin  we  find  expressions 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  19 

which  nowadays  would  be  considered  wicked. 
The  proper  and  satirical  Emma,  and  the  very 
charming  Elizabeth,  say  "Good  God!"  "  My  God!" 
Exquisite  profanity!  It  would  have  wheedled 
the  heart  out  of  a  travelling  colporteur  with  a 
bundle  of  tracts.  Ah,  fresh  blooming  maidens 
with  the  blue  waving  plumes,  what  joy  it  would 
have  been  to  have  met  you,  and  to  have  heard 
from  your  own  lips  those  shocking  expressions 
some  blissful  morning  long  ago,  on  a  breezy  hill- 
top, and  near  the  foliage  of  a  rustling  oak ! 

The  complete  banishment  of  profanity  from 
the  conversation  of  men  of  fashion  seemed  to  me 
a  curious  phenomenon.  I  do  not  believe  it  could 
have  been  accomplished  in  any  country  where 
example  had  less  authority.  The  common 
modern  oaths  you  hear  very  little  ;  as  to  the 
archaic  and  Homeric  forms,  they  have  quite 
gone  out.  I  never  met  a  man,  however  aged, 
who  used  those  expressions.  I  used  constantly 
to  see  one  old  gentleman  who  always  came 
arrayed  in  the  traditional  blue  coat  and  brass 
buttons,  buff  waistcoat,  and  great  neckcloth  of 
the  Regency.  I  fancied  he  might  be  like  that 


2O  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

South  American  parrot  of  which  Humboldt  tells, 
that  was  the  sole  remaining  creature  to  speak 
the  language  of  a  lost  tribe.  I  never  had  the 
pleasure,  however,  of  hearing  him  express  him- 
self. He  silently  surveyed  the  moving  throng. 
The  present,  perhaps,  seemed  dull  to  him.  He 
had  heard,  a  fine  May  morning  long  ago,  in 
Piccadilly,  the  horn  of  the  coachman  ringing  up 
the  street,  and  had  awaited  the  stopping  of  the 
coach  at  Hatchett's,  to  see  such  blooming 
faces  looking  merrily  out  of  the  windows,  and 
the  ladies  in  the  short  waists  and  petticoats  of 
the  time  alighting  from  the  top.  Somewhere 
away  in  one  of  those  shires  whose  name  recalls 
the  green  fields  and  the  sound  of  the  milk  in  the 
pail,  he  had  kissed  a  country  cousin  under  one  of 
the  big  bonnets  they  wore  when  the  century  and 
he  and  his  sweetheart  were  all  in  their  teens. 

In  the  parlours  the  narrow  range  of  thought 
and  conversation  is  even  more  noticeable  than 
at  the  clubs.  Here  the  ladies  set  the  tone  ;  and 
kind  as  they  usually  are,  bright  and  pretty  as 
they  often  are,  there  is  unmistakably  among 
them  an  unconsciousness  of  all  outside  certain 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  21 

narrow  limits  that  custom  has  prescribed  for 
them.  The  freedom  and  gaiety  which  are  not 
uncommon  in  the  parlours  of  Americans  of  the 
best  class  will  be  hard  to  find  in  the  drawing- 
rooms  of  English  fashionables.  They  talk,  pro- 
fessedly. Upon  those  common  topics  which 
should  form  the  ordinary  conversation  they  do 
very  well,  and,  among  the  brighter  of  them,  a 
kind  of  wit  and  wisdom  is  permitted.  But  that 
is  apt  to  be  d  la  mode.  The  wit  is  badly  watered. 
I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  fashionable  wisdom 
and  watered  wit  are  peculiar  to  London.  All 
society-wit  is  somewhat  diseased.  The  wit  of 
rich  and  idle  men  is  poor.  It  is  curious  that 
they  who  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  make  jokes 
should  make  such  very  poor  ones.  There  are  a 
few  recipes  afloat  from  which  most  of  these  fine 
things  are  evidently  prepared.  The  fashionable 
joke  is  usually  accompanied  by  the  fashionable 
gesture,  and  an  expression  of  inward  illumination 
which  the  state  of  the  mind  hardly  justifies. 
Though  as  to  artificial  pantomime  and  vocal 
inflection,  there  is  less  of  that  among  the  English 
"respectables"  than  among  our  own.  It  may 


22  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

seem  to  contradict  this,  but  really  does  not, 
when  I  say  that  our  own  fashionable  manners 
are  borrowed  from  the  English.  English  people 
must  speak  in  some  way,  and  their  peculiarities, 
as  a  rule,  are  proper  and  natural.  Our  imitative 
and  impressible  society  leaders,  seeing  something 
admirable  in  English  aristocratical  style,  copy 
the  accents  and  gestures,  forgetting  that  they  too 
would  seem  admirable  to  others  were  they  to 
speak  naturally. 

As  a  rule,  women  in  English  society  are 
remarkably  natural — negatively  natural,  I  mean. 
English  girls  are  particularly  simple  and  un- 
assuming. They  are  innocent  of  all  effort  to 
impress  or  astonish.  As  all  womankind  does 
and  should  do,  they  make  themselves  as  pretty 
as  they  can ;  but  as  to  personal  superiorities,  their 
educators  do  not  lay  enough  stress  upon  such 
things  to  make  them  ambitious  to  excel  in  that 
way.  All  young  ladies  are  taught  a  certain 
mode  of  deportment,  which  is  excellent  so  far  as 
it  goes.  The  chief  precept  of  the  code,  whether 
inculcated  openly  or  by  the  silent  feeling  of 
society,  is  that  each  young  lady  must  do  as  the 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  23 

rest.  That  "young  English  girl,"  who  is  the 
theme  of  the  novelists  and  the  magazine  bards 
and  artists,  easily  merits  all  the  adulation  she 
receives.  Does  not  all  the  world  know,  is  it  not 
almost  an  impertinence  to  say,  that  for  dignity, 
modesty,  propriety,  sense,  and  a  certain  soft  self- 
possession,  she  has  hardly  her  equal  anywhere? 
But  the  British  maiden  is  taught  that  ambition 
in  character  is  not  a  desirable  thing.  The  natural- 
ness and  propriety  which  accompany  this  state 
of  mind  are  not  particularly  admirable.  It  is  very 
different  from  that  propriety  which  is  the  result 
of  elevation  of  character,  of  conclusions  intimately 
known  and  constantly  practised.  People  who 
have  activity  and  ambition  are  very  apt  to  be 
affected,  and  very  apt  to  unduly  crave  recogni- 
tion. That  we  ask  to  be  thought  superior,  shows 
at  least  that  we  prize  superiority.  When  the 
young  are  left  to  their  own  growth,  and  no  restric- 
tive tariff  is  put  upon  individuality,  we  may 
expect  a  little  nonsense.  Society  will  certainly 
do  a  good  thing  for  the  young  if  it  teaches  them 
the  folly  of  a  desire  for  recognition.  But  this 
society  does  not  do,  I  fear.  It  merely  instructs 


24  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

them  not  to  ask  for  recognition,  because  bv  so 
doing  they  make  a  bad  impression.  It  has  done 
them  a  still  more  doubtful  service,  if,  in  giving 
them  this  very  good  trait,  it  has  also  taught  them 
to  emphasise  less  strongly  the  superiorities  of 
character  and  conduct. 

I  have  said  that  English-society  people  make 
but  little  effort  to  impress  or  astonish  ;  and  I  ex- 
plained that  they  have  no  wish  to  be  thought 
individually  remarkable,  because  that  sort  of 
ambition  among  them  is  a  very  exceptional 
thing.  What  they  do  value  is  the  "getting  on ;" 
and  the  inevitable  effect  of  living  among  them 
is  to  make  one  think  that  that  is  the  best  thing 
one  can  do.  Certainly  those  old  familiar  ideas 
of  the  poets  and  moralists,  "  truth,  innocence, 
fidelity,  affection,  &c.,"  which  one  always  felt  at 
home  with  in  the  snug  corners  of  the  parlours 
at  the  village  sewing-circles,  suddenly  became 
strange  to  me  .and  very  unreal  and  whimsical. 
They  danced  off  at  a  distance  in  the  oddest  and 
most  fantastical  manner.  If  anybody  sneered  at 
"upholstery,"  or  spoke  contemptuously  of  rank 
and  fashion,  you  at  once  fancied  some  one  had 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  25 

snubbed  him ;  if  he  praised  virtue,  you  suspected 
him  of  wanting  a  dinner.  But  while  the  lust  of 
the  eyes  and  the  pride  of  life  are  everything  to 
upper-class  Englishmen,  you  hear  wonderfully 
little  said  about  these  things.  Carlyle  and 
Thackeray,  the  poets  and  satirists  and  the  goody 
old  maids  who  write  the  novels,  though  they 
have  quite  shut  the  mouths  of  these  brave 
gentlemen,  have  by  no  means  driven  such 
thoughts  out  of  their  hearts.  To  give  you  to 
understand  that  they  are  persons  of  consequence, 
they  would  think  the  last  degree  of  vulgarity. 
Yet,  if  they  do  not  claim  consequence,  it  is  not 
because  they  do  not  value  consequence.  They 
know  that  to  assert  openly  their  demand  is  not 
the  best  way  to  have  it  accorded  them.  The 
avidity  of  Mrs.  Governor  Brown  and  Mrs.  Judge 
Jones  for  the  best  rooms  at  the  hotels,  and  the 
recognition  and  sympathy  of  all  the  railway 
conductors,  is  unknown  in  England.  But  the 
two  manners,  so  different  apparently,  are  not  so 
different  essentially.  Both  demand  consideration 
and  consequence — the  one  only  more  successfully 
than  the  other.  The  quiet  demeanour,  the 


26  Some  Impressions  of  [L 

sedulous  avoidance  of  self-assertion,  the  critical 
look,  the  slightly  reserved  bearing,  say  very 
plainly,  "  See,  I  am  a  person  of  consequence." 
Both  make  the  same  inferior  claim.  The  one 

^ 

makes  it  in  a  wise,  refined,  and  successful  way ; 
the  other  in  a  foolish,  vulgar,  and  unsuccessful 
way. 

"  Pose  "  is  the  name  given  to  this  wise,  refined, 
and  successful  manner  of  self-assertion.  It  may 
be  defined  as  the  quality  of  absolute  quiescence. 
By  the  aid  of  it  we  move  with  the  semblance  of 
unconsciousness  through  a  throng  of  which  we 
are  inspecting  every  individual.  Society  has  dis- 
covered (what  the  young  find  it  so  hard  fo  learn) 
that  by  looking  quite  blank  we  may  keep  people 
altogether  in  the  dark  as  to  what  we  are  think- 
ing about.  That  which  Mr.  Phunky  found  so 
difficult — to  look  as  though  no  one  were  looking 
at  him — London  society  has  learned  to  do.  Yet 
I  think  that  some  other  quality  besides  mere  qui- 
escence is  necessary  to  "pose."  That  we  will 
suppose  to  be  some  beauty  (whether  physical  or 
spiritual)  of  face  or  form.  An  unconscious  coster- 
monger  would  not  be  imposing.  I  have  seen 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  27 

flunkies  who  possessed  the  quality  to  a  greater 
degree  than  their  masters,  and  who  were  yet  not 
admirable.  A  thing  must  be  beautiful  absolutely 
before  it  can  be  beautiful  in  any  one  condition — 
particularly  in  that  of  rest.  No  doubt  the  young 
men  are  as  fine-looking  a  lot  of  fellows  as  can  be 
found.  They  have  good  physiques,  which  they 
keep  in  good  condition ;  they  have  had  an  edu- 
cation among  people  of  breeding  and  cultivation ; 
they  have  been  at  the  best  schools,  and  brought 
away  such  culture  as  they  could  not  help  getting  ; 
they  have  had  respect  and  consideration  from  their 
cradles  ;  they  know  very  well  they  have  nothing 
to  ask  of  society.  But  besides  all  this,  they  owe 
most  to  the  pains  which  they  lavish  upon  their 
exteriors.  That  last  is  an  important  point.  Let 
Carlyle  deride  the  Stultz  swallow-tail.  The  Stultz 
swallow-tail  and  the  white  waistcoats,  and  the 
gold  chains,  and  the  wonderful  linen,  and  the  silk 
stockings,  and  the  beautiful  boots — these  between 
them  do  work  wonders.  The  young  dons  at  the 
universities  and  the  young  clergy  of  England — 
than  whom  no  finer  race  of  gentlemen  exists, 
candid,  catholic,  modest,  learned,  courteous — are 


28  Some  Impressions  of  [i. 

yet  not  so  beautiful  as  the  men  of  Pall  Mall  and 
St.  James's  Street.  The  reason  is  that  they  do  not 
so  generally  seek  the  outdoor  life,  and  especially 
that  they  give  no  such  scrupulous  and  continuous 
care  to  the  decoration  of  the  ambrosial  person. 

In  English  ladies, "pose"  is  particularly  admired, 
yet  I  am  not  sure  that  the  novelists  do  not  make 
too  much  of  it.  The  female  phenomenon  at  a 
circus  is  trained  to  stand  with  one  foot  on  the 
back  of  a  galloping  horse,  and  yet  not  for  a 
moment  lose  her  equable  expression  of  counte- 
nance. Surely,  then,  it  were  no  such  great  thing 
to  teach  a  lady  to  move  amid  a  throng  of  well- 
disposed  people  with  the  appearance  of  equanimity 
and  unconsciousness.  The  ladies  are  beautiful, 
especially  the  younger  and  softer  of  them ;  they 
choose  to  stand  still,  and  the  impression  which 
is  really  due  to  some  quality  of  face  or  form  or 
spirit  is  ascribed  to  attitude.  But  I  doubt  if 
quiescence  is  the  highest  attainable  condition  of 
mind  and  body.  Grace  is  beauty  become  ex- 
pressive and  vital.  That  is  the  quality  which 
must  delight  us  while  we  move  upon  the  earth, 
and  we  are  not  content  with  any  state  of  things 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  29 

which  robs  us  of  it.  We  shall  not  always  be  here, 
and  we  are  impatient  that  whatever  there  is  lovely 
in  life  should  be  in  haste  to  express  itself.  Grace, 
I  should  say,  was  the  expression  of  a  beautiful 
past.  It  finds  egress,  we  know,  in  any  sort  of 
action  —  walking,  sewing,  reading,  or  singing — 
but  most  of  all  in  dancing.  Here,  fortunately, 
the  baneful  influence  of  "pose"  is  counteracted. 
The  ball  seems  to  be  the  invention  of  some  good 
friend  of  humanity  to  force  people  to  be  quite 
themselves.  Self-indulgence  and  conceit  generate 
ugliness ;  virtue  and  self-denial  beget  beauty,  and 
we  know  how  necessary  it  is  that  people  should 
always  be  expressing  these  things.  No  training 
of  the  body  can  eradicate  vulgarity  ;  no  awkward- 
ness or  inexperience  of  limb  can  suppress  grace. 
With  what  odious  sensations  the  trained  dancing- 
girls  of  the  Alhambra  afflict  us !  What  inde- 
scribable pleasure  some  little  creature's  mistakes 
who  blunders  in  the  Lancers  afford  us ! 

"  Pose "  has  been  adopted  by  English  people 
of  fashion  in  self-defence.  London  and  Texan 
societies  have  this  one  point  in  common — they 
all  go  armed,  even  to  the  women.  As  acquaint- 


3O  Some  Impressions  of  |'i. 

ances  in  the  South-west  discuss  politics  over  their 
slings  and  cocktails,  with  knives  and  revolvers 
half  hidden  in  their  belts,  so  the  London  swell, 
as  you  meet  him  at  the  club  or  the  party,  hardly 
conceals  under  his  waistcoat  and  watch-chains  the 
handles  of  his  weapons  of  defence  ;  and,  set  like 
jewels  in  the  girdle  that  zones  a  lady's  waist, 
you  detect  the  dearest  little  gemmed  and  mounted 
implements  of  destruction.  The  Englishman  con- 
ducts himself  as  though  he  were  in  an  enemy's 
country.  In  the  strictest  apostolic  sense  he 
regards  this  life  as  a  warfare.  "  And  well  he 
may,"  he  would  say.  "  Consider  what  people 
we  meet,  what  dangers  we  encounter  by  sea  and 
land,  on  the  promenade,  in  the  park,  and  at  the 
watering-place.  The  parvenu  walks  abroad  in 
daylight.  All  about  us  are  people  who  don't 
know  their  grandfathers.  Everywhere  rich  con- 
tractors and  lotion-sellers  lie  in  ambush.  It 
behoves  us  to  tread  cautiously.  And  not  only 
are  we  in  constant  dread  of  these  people,  but  we 
must  be  for  ever  on  our  guard  against  those  of 
our  own  sort.  If  we  are  affable  to  our  superiors, 
they  may  think  us  familiar  ;  if  we  are  civil  to 


i.]  London  Social  Life.  31 

our  equals,  they  may  fancy  we  think  them  better 
than  ourselves.  So,  amid  imminent  perils  from 
the  insults  of  the  great,  from  the  snubs  of  equals, 
and  the  familiarities  of  inferiors,  we  move  through 
this  dangerous  wilderness  of  society." 

Of  the  external  advantage  of  London  society 
I  have  already  spoken.  Its  machinery  is  nearly 
perfect.  One  meets  numbers  of  persons  who 
not  only  bear  themselves  perfectly,  but  seem  to 
think  and  feel  almost  with  perfection ;  women 
sensible  and  gracious,  men  from  whom  reflection 
and  high  purpose  have  removed  every  trace  of 
triviality.  Parties  and  receptions  have  this  ad- 
vantage ;  we  have  the  perfection  of  social  ease 
with  those  to  whom  we  are  under  no  obligation 
to  be  agreeable.  The  guests  cannot  be  uncon- 
scious and  oblivious  of  the  host,  nor  the  host  of 
the  guests.  But  between  those  who  meet  on 
common  ground  there  may  be  silence  or  con- 
versation, just  as  is  most  comfortable.  Hence 
the  benefit  of  such  an  organised  social  establish- 
ment as  London  possesses.  The  great  distinction 
which  rank  and  money  obtain  in  England  may 
perhaps  be  irksome  to  those  who  spend  their  lives 


32  London  Social  Lift*  [i. 

in  the  midst  of  its  society.  To  a  stranger  or 
sojourner,  it  is  a  novel  and  interesting  feature. 
One  felt  that  here  was  company  which,  however 
it  might  be  in  Saturn  and  Jupiter,  no  set  of 
tellurians  at  least  could  affect  to  despise.  You 
enjoyed  this  sensation.  All  round  this  wide 
planet,  through  the  continents  and  the  islands  of 
the  sea,  among  the  Franks  and  the  Arabs,  the 
Scandinavians,  the  Patagonians,  and  the  Poly- 
nesians, there  were  none  who  could  give  them- 
selves airs  over  this.  The  descendants  of  Adam, 
the  world  over,  could  show  nothing  better. 


English  Sundays  and  London 
Churches. 


I  DOUBT  if  there  is,  upon  the  outside,  an  uglier 
or  more  unattractive  holiday  in  the  world  than 
Sunday  in  an  English  or  American  town.  There 
is  something  in  the  spectacle  of  the  closed  shops 
and  barred  windows,  the  long,  deserted  business 
thoroughfare,  and  in  the  ringing  of  the  iron  cellar 
doors  over  which  your  feet  rattle  drearily,  to  the 
last  degree  desolate  and  inhospitable.  Even  in 
the  parks  and  city  squares  the  day  does  not  lose 
its  disconsolate  aspect.  The  shoemaker  and  his 
wife  trundling  their  baby  carriage  afflict  us  with 
a  sense  of  commiseration.  His  Sunday  clothes 
and  his  wife's  parasol  and  their  solemn,  circum- 
spect walking  about,  suggest  most  vividly  his 
unhappy,  shabby  toil,  his  unending  drudgery. 

J> 


34  English  Sundays  [n. 

Can  there  be  anything  but  ugliness  in  a  city- 
square  upon  a  Sunday,  with  an  iron  bench  to  sit 
upon,  a  gravel  path  to  walk  upon,  a  policeman 
near  at  hand,  and  the  sight  of  three  or  four 
smart  young  clerks  condemned  to  spend  the  day 
in  each  other's  company.  There  is,  however,  in 
many  American  towns  (I  never  saw  anything  of 
the  kind  in  London),  a  street  where  the  nice 
people  walk  up  and  down  on  Sunday  afternoons. 
The  young  ladies  are  pretty  and  gay  and  loqua- 
cious, and  the  young  gentlemen,  though  a  trifle 
overdressed,  are  happy  and  endeavour  to  be 
agreeable.  On  a  winter  or  autumn  afternoon, 
the  fine  promenade  of  an  American  city  is  bright 
and  splendid.  There  is  something  a  little  hard, 
something  not  quite  warm  and  generous,  in  the 
spectacle  of  the  long,  cold,  gay  street.  Yet  the 
scene  is  not  unpleasing.  The  polished  window- 
pane  is  now  and  then  lit  up  with  a  flickering  ray 
of  the  firelight  within.  Certainly  the  day  is  not 
without  austerity  even  here.  But  the  neighbour- 
hood of  friends  in  a  great  city  finds  one  well 
contented  with  the  severity  and  peculiarity  of  the 
religious  festival  of  the  week.  I  am  willing  to  put 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  35 

up  with  the  abolition  of  the  shop-windows,  and  the 
desolation  of  streets  so  bright  on  other  days,  with 
the  depressing  hilarities  of  the  people,  and  the 
dismal  bits  of  green  grass,  with  fountains,  iron 
benches,  policemen,  and  baby-carriages.  The 
tinge  of  gloom  which  hangs  over  the  elegant 
quarter  of  the  town  is  agreeable  rather  than 
otherwise.  I  am  glad  of  the  Puritan  reminiscence 
which  yet  hangs  about  our  Sunday.  It  is  well 
that  there  should  be  one  day  in  the  week  which 
we  are  under  some  vague  obligation  not  to  give 
to  trivialities,  when  at  times  we  shall  even  repress 
that  laughter  and  joking  at  the  sound  of  which 
dreams  and  emotions  are  apt  to  break  away  and 
vanish,  when  the  lights  are  lowered  and  fingers 
wander  over  the  •  keys,  and  "  The  spacious  firma- 
ment on  high,"  and  "  By  cool  Siloam's  shady  rill/' 
are  sung  by  the  voices  of  the  kind  and  good. 

The  English  Sunday  is  more  sombre  than  our 
own.  Here  the  day  wears  more  of  a  holiday 
aspect ;  the  people  in  the  streets  look  happier 
and  are  better  dressed.  The  genteel  English 
think  it  common  and  snobbish  to  dress  much  on 
Sunday.  Of  course  they  ascribe  this  notion  to 


36  English  Sundays  [H. 

their  nicer  sense  of  propriety ;  but  how  much 
of  it  is  due  to  superior  taste  and  sanctity,  and 
how  much  to  the  tradition  that  snobs  dress  on 
Sunday  because  persons  of  their  station  are  com- 
pelled to  work  on  other  days,  I  do  not  pretend 
to  decide.  One  may  say  that  the  English,  as  a 
rule,  regard  Sunday  with  rather  more  sobriety  and 
strictness  than  ourselves.  They  think  it  is  godless 
to  stay  away  from  church ;  and  it  is  to  the 
churches  one  must  go  to  see  the  English  Sunday. 
We,  in  this  country,  have  always  had  a  poetic 
curiosity  and  interest  in  the  churches  and  parson- 
ages of  England.  The  "decent  church"  (inimitable 
adjective!)  when,  for  the  first  time,  on  the  road 
from  Liverpool  to  London,  one  sees  it  crowning 
a  well-clipped,  humid  hill-top,  softly  returns  to  the 
imagination  as  something  known  in  infancy  and 
forgotten.  Ever  since  childhood  our  minds  have 
been  filled  with  innumerable  stories  and  poems 
about  the  parsons  and  parsonages.  There  is  the 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  and  there  is  the  clergyman 
in  the  "  Deserted  Village ; "  and,  later,  we  are 
familiar  with  many  admirable  or  amusing  parsons 
or  parsons'  wives  and  daughters  on  the  pages  of 


ii.  1  and  London  Churches.  37 

Miss  Austin  and  Trollope.  The  clergyman  seems 
to  have  been  the  best  man  in  their  society  to  unite 
in  his  person  virtue  and  gentility  with  tragical 
poverty.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  in  the 
lives  of  many  clergymen's  families  just  that 
plenum  of  earthly  comfort  which  is  alluring  for 
the  gentler  uses  of  literature,  just  that  happy 
balance  of  circumstances  which  equally  removes 
the  household  from  the  ugliness  of  want,  and 
from  the  pretension  which  is  the  peril  of  too 
much  success.  The  parson  has  been  called  the 
"  centre  of  English  society."  High  and  low,  rich 
and  poor,  all  group  themselves  about  him,  and 
compute  their  position  by  reference  to  him.  He 
touches  the  community  at  every  point ;  he  may 
know  everybody,  though  his  place  is  a  very 
variable  and  accidental  one.  His  importance,  of 
course  other  things  being  equal,  is  in  proportion 
to  his  income.  He  is  a  greater  man  in  the  country 
than  in  town.  Some  parsons  are  very  much 
greater  than  others.  Between  a  bishop  and  a 
poor  curate  there  exists  what  the  novelists  would 
call  a  "gulf."  Indeed,  I  am  told  that  a  young 
curate,  when  speaking  to  a  bishop  in  the  street, 


38  English  Sundays  [IL 

would  be  likely  to  take  off  his  hat  and  stand 
bareheaded.  In  London,  the  priest  appears  to 
lose  himself  amidst  the  crowd  ;  but  even  there  he 
retains  an  intrinsic  identity  and  distinctiveness 
which  nobody  else  possesses. 

We  have,  besides,  been  attracted  by  the  artistic 
and  poetical  qualities  of  the  Church  of  England. 
It  possesses  these  attractions,  not  because  it  is  a 
State  Church,  but  because  it  is  a  National  Church. 
It  is  the  Church  of  all,  and,  because  the  people 
in  humble  and  middle  life  outnumber  the  great 
and  the  fortunate,  it  is  more  the  church  of  the  poor 
than  of  the  rich.  This  fact  gives  it  substance  and 
depth,  and  a  sombre  strength,  like  the  chill  scd 
and  damp  winds  of  their  autumn  evening.  In  the 
Church  the  people  have  for  ages  been  christened, 
married,  and  buried ;  indeed,  any  other  kind  of 
religious  establishment  has  a  look  either  shabby 
or  glaringly  brand-new.  With  us  it  is  always  the 
particular  church,  say,  at  the  corner  of  Moyomen- 
sing  Avenue  and  iSth  Street,  which  attracts  or 
repels  one.  Is  it  a  good  place  to  go?  Do  we 
like  the  clergyman,  and  do  we  like  the  people  ? 
One  of  the  best  parts  of  any  Church  Service  here, 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  39 

I  take  it,  is  shaking  hands  with  acquaintances 
going  down  the  aisles.  We  go  here  to  those 
houses  which  attract  and  please,  which  are  the 
brightest  and  happiest-looking.  The  minified 
cathedrals,  where  gloom  was  secured  by  the  same 
cheap  means  by  which  one  can  get  it  in  any 
pantry,  namely,  by  having  no  windows,  are  re- 
placed by  houses  of  worship  more  fit  and  sensible. 
We  have  no  old  churches ;  and  antiquity  here  is 
so  weak  and  unimportant,  that  people  do  well 
in  ceasing  altogether  to  imitate  its  solemn  and 
pathetic  impressions.  How  slight  and  feeble  is 
our  past,  the  man  will  feel  who  loiters  in  Trinity 
church-yard,  or  strolls  for  an  hour  in  St.  Paul's, 
the  interior  of  which  wonderfully  resembles  an 
old  English  church.  What  comes  to  us  from  pre- 
revolutionary  times  is  scarcely  more  inspiring  than 
the  rubbish  left  in  an  attic  by  the  people  who 
move  out  to  those  who  move  in.  Who  that  drops 
his  ticket  at  Wall  Street  Ferry  cares  to  remember 
that,  on  that  spot,  George  and  Martha  Washington 
landed  from  Virginia  ninety  years  ago  ;  or  who  of 
the  crowds  that  flock  hourly  about  the  Exchange 
calls  to  mind  that,  on  the  balcony  of  a  building 


40  English  Sundays  [n. 

which  once  stood  there,  the  first  president  was 
inaugurated?  The  mighty  To-Day  of  the  con- 
tinent is  scarcely  conscious  of  these  trifles.  It 
is  different  in  England.  George  III.,  with  his 
tumultuous,  triumphant  Empire,  and  his  thunder- 
ing Waterloos  and  Trafalgars,  curbs  the  conceit 
and  insolence  of  the  living.  So  far  as  duration 
goes,  America  has  had  the  very  respectable  past 
of  nearly  four  centuries.  But,  whatever  is  ancient 
in  point  of  time  by  association  with  this  continent, 
seems  to  partake  of  its  newness.  What  is  old  here 
does  not  at  all  become  precious  because  it  is  rare. 
It  is  rather  swallowed  up  in  the  all-pervading, 
all-forgetting  present.  A  tomb-stone  with  1790 
scratched  upon  it  is  a  less  impressive  object  here 
than  in  Europe.  The  occupant  has  no  con- 
stituency ;*  there  are  too  few  of  him  to  make  it 
worth  while  to  take  him  into  account.  But  even 
the  recent  past  in  Europe  is  strong,  because  of 
the  multitudes  which  disappear  with  a  generation, 
and  of  the  ages  full  of  life  and  history  upon  which 
it  lies.  The  names  over  the  chancel  of  men  who 
fell  with  Nelson,  and  the  tablets  upon  the  walls, 
not  a  half  century  old,  appeal  to  us  with  a  strange 
earnestness. 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  41 

There  is  no  doubt  that  these  English  temples 
possess  sublime  and  fervid  impressions  which 
houses  of  worship  of  yesterday  cannot  produce. 
Yet  the  services  in  many  of  them,  particularly 
in  the  West-End,  are  very  dull  and  vapid.  The 
churches  were  a  third  full,  with  pretty  much  every- 
body asleep  or  inattentive.  The  most  devout  and 
enthusiastic  worship  is  to  be  found  in  those  parts 
of  London  inhabited  mainly  by  the  lower  middle 
classes — people  who  live  by  trades  and  small  shops. 
In  some  churches,  where  the  pews  are  reserved 
until  the  time  for  the  service  to  begin,  the  outside 
public  range  themselves  along  the  aisle,  waiting 
to  take  the  unoccupied  seats  when  the  moment 
comes.  In  other  churches  the  pews  are  thrown 
open  during  the  evening  service,  and  anybody 
can  come  in  and  take  a  seat,  the  only  precedence 
being  such  as  long  occupation  and  courtesy  give. 
I  remember  a  young  lady  who  hustled  me  out 
of  a  comfortable  corner  on  the  plea  that  it  was 
"  hers."  There  she  sat  and  opened  her  prayer- 
book  and  surrendered  herself  almost  greedily  to 
her  ecstasy  and  meditation.  How  she  valued 
that  snug  corner  I  could  tell  from  the  warlike 


42  English  Sundays  [n. 

expression  of  her  countenance,  when  for  a  moment 
I  looked  sceptical  of  her  right  to  eject  me. 

This  was  at  St.  Dominic's,  with  the  curate  of 
which  church  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  contract 
an  acquaintance.  The  curate  of  St.  Dominic's 
was  a  very  good,  laborious,  and  capable  man.  He 
preached  two  or  three  sermons  on  Sunday ;  his 
evenings  were  occupied  with  lectures  and  charities ; 
during  five  days  of  the  week  he  taught  a  great 
city  school.  The  rest  of  the  time  he  took  in 
writing  his  two  sermons,  visiting  the  sick  and 
burying  the  dead,  in  reading  the  Bible  to  all  the 
bed-ridden  old  women  in  the  parish,  and  in  bap- 
tising certain  red  and  blue-faced,  black-haired 
and  very  tender  babies.  How  shall  I  describe 
him — a  saint  without  a  feebleness,  a  humorist 
without  scepticism,  an  Englishman  without  a 
trace  of  the  egotist,  a  tireless  worker  and  an 
unquestioning  child  of  duty;  yet  with  the  most 
generous  sense  of  enjoyment,  and  a  most 
modest  charity  for  the  indolent  and  the  semi- 
virtuous.  I  had  a  note  to  him  from  a  friend 
who  had  met  him  in  Switzerland.  With  his 
countenance  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  St.  Dominic's. 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  43 

Often  on  Sunday  evenings  at  7  o'clock  I  used 
to  call  at  the  curate's  lodgings  for  the  chance  of  a 
walk  with  him  to  church,  or  rather  a  trot,  for  we 
were  nearly  always  late,  the  parson  stopping  to 
tack  a  tail  on  to  his  sermon.  It  was  a  mile 
away,  and  the  chimes  of  St.  Dominic's  were 
clanging  as  we  brought  up  the  vestibule.  It  was 
an  ancient  building,  standing  in  what  is  called 
the  "  City," — a  district  inclosed  by  the  old  walls 
and  now  entirely  taken  up  by  trade.  I  got  my 
seat  in  church,  and  when  the  bell  stopped,  the 
procession  of  choristers,  dressed  in  white,  began 
to  move  up  the  aisle,  the  youngest  and  tenderest 
coming  first,  the  older  and  taller  following.  The 
little  ones  were  often  beautiful  boys,  with  the 
soft  tender  English  complexion,  and  looked  like 
angels,  though  I  often  saw  them  nudging  each 
other  when  they  were  responding  the  loudest, 
and  communicating  by  dumb  show,  with  spelling 
upon  their  fingers  and  with  grimaces.  Their  faces 
were  so  clean,  and  they  had  their  hair  so  well 
brushed,  that  it  was  easy  to  see  that  some  neat 
and  proud  mother  had  inspected  every  one  of 
them.  One  little  fellow  in  particular  looked  as 


44  English  Sundays  [n. 

if  his  mother  had  followed  him  all  about  the  room, 
holding  him  by  the  chin,  brushing  his  forehead  and 
temples  violently  as  he  retreated,  and,  perhaps, 
giving  him  now  and  then  a  crack  on  the  head 
with  the  hair-brush.  The  procession  grew  coarser 
as  it  grew  older ;  the  difference  between  the  little 
and  the  big  choristers  was  much  like  that  between 
young  and  tender  leeks  and  onions  gone  to  seed. 
The  choristers  were,  I  suppose,  taken  almost  en- 
tirely from  the  families  of  small  shopkeepers  and 
mechanics.  Directly  behind  the  grown  choristers, 
and  attired  very  much  like  them,  came  the  clergy; 
and  the  contrast  between  their  countenances 
showed  more  plainly  than  anything  I  remember 
seeing,  the  unmistakable  unlikencss  of  gentle- 
men to  persons  who  are  not  gentlemen.  There 
were  the  well-defined,  educated  faces  of  two  or 
three  young  clergymen,  and  in  a  singular  contrast 
was  the  loutish,  indistinct  chaos  in  the  counte- 
nances of  the  overgrown  singers. 

The  curate  preached  always  in  the  evenings, 
and  led  a  good  part  of  the  service.  His  sermons 
were  delivered  in  a  low,  musical  monotone  or 
recitative.  They  were  thoughtful  and  well  ex- 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  45 

pressed,  excellent  sermons,  among  the  best  I  heard 
in  London  ;  but  what  made  them  especially  admir- 
able was  the  manifest  purity  of  the  man,  the 
reality  of  his  goodness.  Whether  he  read  or 
preached,  or  prayed,  or  sat  silent,  you  felt  the 
influence  of  a  devoted  spirit.  It  is  the  sort  of 
man  he  is,  not  so  much  what  he  says,  that  makes 
a  clergyman  a  good  one.  You  would  not  care 
to  have  a  vulgar,  superficial,  or  conceited  person 
sit  in  your  room  and  occupy  your  attention  for 
an  hour.  It  is  just  as  unpleasant  to  have  any 
such  man  moving  constantly  before  your  eyes  in 
church,  praying,  reading,  and  exhorting.  Of  vul- 
garity one  sees  very  little  among  the  English 
clergy,  but,  of  course,  most  clergymen,  like  most 
other  people,  do  not  possess  very  clear  ideas,  and 
it  is  necessary  that  they  be  exhibiting  their  lack  of 
strength  during  the  whole  time  they  occupy  the 
eyes  of  the  congregation.  Their  manner  of  read- 
ing the  Bible  seems  to  be  altogether  without  sense 
or  reason.  They  take  the  promises,  the  revelations, 
the  ecstasies,  the  lamentations,  and  the  genealogies 
all  in  the  same  voice,  and  at  the  same  pace.  I 
remember  once  to  have  heard,  in  the  afternoon 


46  English  Sundays  [n. 

service  at  Westminster  Abbey,  a  clergyman  reading 
the  Scriptures  in  a  heavy,  sonorous  voice,  with 
which  he  was  obviously  very  well  contented. 
Paul,  in  the  chapter  read,  has  been  speaking  in 
a  lofty,  Apostolic  strain,  which  the  agreeable  bari- 
tone suited  very  well.  But  he  closes  the  epistle 
with  some  commonplace  messages,  which  are 
manifestly  not  to  be  read  with  the  same  sub- 
limity of  enunciation  as  the  other  parts  of  the 
chapter.  But  the  clergyman  grandly  intoned, 
"  Bring  Zenas,  the  lawyer-r-r-r-r-r,"  and  the  ca- 
dences of  this  bathetic  expression  rolled  among  the 
arches  of  the  cathedral  and  over  the  heads  of  the 
people.  The  curate  of  St.  Dominic's  intoned  the 
service  also,  and  with  the  motions  of  his  voice 
his  large  congregation  was  instinctively  in  sym- 
pathy. His  reading  was  affecting,  as  I  have  said, 
owing,  not  so  much  to  any  grace  of  manner,  or 
agreeable  vocal  cadences  (though  his  voice  was  a 
sweet  one),  as  to  the  purity  and  devotion  of  his 
spirit.  Some  more  modern  sorts  of  sin,  I  used 
to  think,  though,  might  have  very  well  found 
their  way  into  his  liturgy.  Could  he  not  have 
elided  "  From  false  doctrine,  heresy  and  schism," 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  47 

and  have  intoned  instead,  "  From  inconstancy  and 
vain  obliviousness,  from  ennui,  lassitude,  and  all 
self-admiration ! " 

St.  Dominic's  was  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  city 
sanctuaries,  its  history  stretching  way  back  before 
Elizabeth.  The  church  was  destroyed  and  re- 
built at  the  time  of  the  great  fire.  Its  aisles  have 
been  the  resting-place  of  city  worthies  as  long  as 
London  has  had  Lord  Mayors,  or  London  women 
have  been  comely.  Their  quaint  memorials  were 
upon  the  windows — "  Thomas  Watson,  citizen,  of 
Milk  Street, — 1513."  How  many  generations  of 
listless  children,  lying  back  in  these  pews  during 
tlie  long  service,  have  spelt  out  his  virtues  on  the 
marble  underneath,  and  wondered  what  a  quaint 
old  fellow  he  was,  and  how  strange  it  must  be 
to  be  dead  so  long,  and  have  one's  name  scratched 
in  such  queer  characters  under  the  painted  figures 
of  saints  and  martyrs,  then  sighed  to  think  what 
an  age  it  would  oe  till  dinner.  St.  Dominic's 
was  just  such  a  church  as  old  City  magnates 
should  have  worshipped  and  grown  rich  in.  The 
place  had  a  look  of  tarnished  bullion  and  dingy 
guineas ;  it  made  one  think  of  the  dark  corners 


48  English  Sundays  [n. 

of  old  counting-rooms.  On  the  walls  and  over 
the  chancel,  upward-gazing  saints  aspired  with 
the  faith  of  long-gone  ages.  The  glad  singing 
of  the  choristers  and  the  murmurings  of  the 
people  arose  incessantly ;  from  the  tablets  upon 
the  walls  the  past  gave  testimony.  There,  with 
the  dark  wilderness  of  London  trade  without,  the 
people  knelt  and  worshipped  in  the  same  old 
place  which  had  been  a  landmark  to  their  be- 
lieving fathers. 

After  church  the  curate  used  to  guide  me 
through  all  sorts  of  strange  lanes  and  arcades, 
and  openings,  and  narrow  passages  through  which 
we  could  scarcely  get  abreast,  to  the  vicarage, 
which  was  a  third  of  a  mile  away,  where  half-a- 
dozen  of  the  parsons  of  the  neighbourhood 
gathered  for  supper.  Incessant  and  indefatigable 
as  he  was,  he  yet  seemed  to  have  more  time  for 
his  friends  than  many  men  who  do  not  accom- 
plish a  fourth  of  his  work.  I  took  advantage 
of  all  tne  time  I  could  get  of  him.  He  was 
always  to  be  found  after  church  on  Sunday 
when  the  samfe  group  that  gathered  at  the  vicar- 
age came  to  him  to  lunch.  These  meetings  were 


ii.]  and  London  Chzirches.  49 

marked  by  a  friendship  and  abandon  rare,  I 
should  have  supposed,  among  Englishmen.  This 
we  owed  to  the  hospitality  of  the  curate's  spirit, 
and  his  laugh,  which,  I  think,  was  one  of  the 
most  delightful  I  ever  heard.  He  possessed  a 
most  capacious  nature.  His  humour,  of  which  he 
had  a  great  deal,  was  just  like  his  frame,  large 
and  ruddy.  He  was  from  the  farmer  class ;  and, 
it  seemed  to  me,  that  he  had  in  his  blood  the 
jollity  of  a  hundred  Christmas  Eves,  and  in  his 
voice  the  warmth  and  volume  of  centuries  of 
roaring  Yule-logs  upon  the  hearth.  He  had 
perfect  health  ;  he  was  three-and-thirty,  indeed, 
but  he  had  that  other  youth — the  youth  of  purity 
and  simplicity.  On  Sundays  he  usually  came 
back  from  church  in  great  spirits.  His  talk  with 
his  clerical  friends  ran  upon  parish  matters,  the 
peculiarities  of  some  familiar  people,  an  odd 
answer  of  a  charity  scholar  to  a  question  in  the 
catechism,  or  what  had  been  seen  and  heard 
among  the  poor  during  the  week.  For  instance 
(this  was  told  me  in  a  subdued  voice,  as  if  to 
apologise  for  its  profanity),  the  curate  ha.d  called 
upon  a  poor  girl  who  had  lost  her  baby.  He 


5<D  English  Sundays  [n. 

tried  to  comfort  her,  and  told  her  that  it  was 
better  off  where  it  was.  She  was  inconsolable  ; 
but  when  he  reminded  her  that  it  had  gone  to 
Heaven,  she  said  "yes"  (sobbing),  that  she  be- 
lieved it  was  a  "bloody  little  angel."  I  mention 
this  to  show  the  strength  of  the  soil  from  which 
these  men  drew  their  nutriment.  Their  conver- 
sation was  full  of  fact  and  personal  experience; 
but  the  wit  and  pleasure,  the  "  sweet  insanity  "  to 
which  the  company  attained  when  their  minds 
were  the  clearest  and  kindest,  they  owed  to  the 
patronage  and  hospitality  of  the  host  The  free- 
dom and  perfect  unselfishness  of  the  parson  pro- 
voked the  humour  of  his  guests  to  the  very  limit 
of  audacity;  indeed,  at  times,  to  the  border  of 
delirium. 

This  pale  photograph  is  all  I  have  with  which 
to  reproduce  his  modesty,  his  efficiency,  his  good- 
ness, his  friendship,  his  humour.  Even  these 
words — a  hieroglyphical  sort  of  suggestion  of  him 
rather  than  of  definition — may  bring  him  into 
trouble,  should  they  find  their  way  across  the 
ocean.  The  ladies  at  the  vicarage,  where  we  used 
to  sup  on  Sunday  evenings  after  service,  used  to 


H.]  and  London  Churches.  51 

tease  him  sorely.  Indeed,  that  was  the  way  they 
took  to  testify  the  warm  regard  in  which  they  held 
the  curate.  They  had  rather  a  handle  against  him 
in  the  great  devotion  of  certain  old  ladies  in  the 
parish.  These  old  people  could  not  help  testifying 
their  love  of  him,  and  not  very  skilful  in  expressing 
themselves,  would  make  use  of  epithets  rather 
more  fond  than  accurate.  Expressions  meant  for 
parsons  of  the  honeyed  or  pallid  and  ascetic  sort 
sat  rather  absurdly  upon  his  broad  shoulders. 
Then  there  were  certain  good  and  pretty  women 
who  used  to  persecute  this  devout  man  and  worthy 
servant  by  recalling  these  compliments  in  his  pre- 
sence. Thus  he  was  never  permitted  to  forget 
that  he  had  been  called  "  the  handsomest  curate 
in  Wolverton."  Perhaps  they  may  find  something 
in  my  encomiums  to  tease  him  about.  1  can  see 
him  alter  church  on  Sunday  evenings  at  the 
vicarage,  indulging  deep  draughts  of  beer,  and 
very  busy  at  the  cold  chicken,  amid  gusts  of  his 
own  laughter  and  expostulation,  exclaiming  that 
a  certain  Iriend  of  his  is  a  "blasted  Yankee,"  "a 
heretic,"  &c. 

People  in  England  do  not  run  together  so  much 


52  English  Sundays  [n. 

by  churches  as  in  this  country.  There  is  the  broad 
division  between  the  Establishment  and  the  Dis- 
senters, much  broader  than  that  between  any  two 
American  denominations,  though  the  line  is  by 
no  means  so  marked  as  it  once  was.  But  you 
find  comparatively  very  little  association  by  par- 
ticular church  societies.  In  the  West-End  there 
is  none  at  all  ;  in  the  less  fashionable  parts  of 
London  the  Church  is  a  sort  of  focus  for  the  con- 
gregation, but  to  no  such  degree  as  in  America. 
They  have  nothing  like  our  Sunday  schools,  about 
which  the  young  people  in  an  American  town  and 
village  get  together,  and  which,  in  their  own  minds, 
they  associate  much  more  intimately  with  cider 
and  hickory  nuts  than  with  the  catechism.  Sun- 
day schools  in  England  are  entirely  for  the  poor. 
The  original  object  was  to  teach  children  who 
could  not  go  to  school  during  the  week.  Of  the 
bright  and  attractive  gatherings  of  pretty  children 
and  happy  people  among  us  they  have  no  idea. 
The  Sunday  school  here  is  so  national  and  peculiar 
an  institution,  that  I  wonder  it  has  not  got  into 
literature.  The  number  of  people,  the  country 
through,  who  have  recollections  of  them,  must  be 


Ji.]  and  London  Churches.  53 

very  great.  In  the  days  Avhen  school  discipline 
was  severer  than  at  present,  a  boy's  reason  for 
liking  them  was  that  they  did  not  "lick"  and 
"  keep  in."  But  the  man  who  looks  back  upon 
those  festivals  will  remember  some  impressions 
more  exalted  and  mystical  than  any  he  has  known 
since.  There  was  a  pale  little  girl,  with  a  demeanour 
of  almost  severe  purity,  and  a  face  quite  grave 
and  intense,  who,  on  Sunday  mornings,  was  hid 
from  him  too  often  by  intervening  and  constantly 
interrupting  heads  and  bonnets.  The  breeze  that 
swung  the  branches  into  the  open  windows,  rattled 
the  Bible  leaves,  and  blew  a  skein  of  her  yellow 
hair  over  her  temples.  Then  there  was  a  boy  of 
fifteen,  who  was  the  secretary,  and  who  wore  coat- 
tails,  and  who  was  a  very  great  personage.  With 
book  in  hand  and  pencil  behind  his  ear,  he  went 
among  the  girls  and  gathered  pennies,  and  re- 
ceived the  offering  of  the  pale  little  girl,  apparently 
unconscious  that  she  was  unlike  the  others.  This 
boy  was  marshal,  and  wore  a  rosette  on  excursions, 
and  when  a  missionary  came  to  address  the  school, 
he  rose  and  moved  a  vote  of  thanks.  Wild  and 
thrilling  eminence  !  There  was  but  one  unpleasant 


54  English  Sundays  [n. 

thing  about  the  Sunday  school,  that  to-morrow 
was  Monday,  and  that  the  sight  of  the  pale  little 
girl,  and  the  pleasant  hubbub  about  Jonah  and 
Elijah,  would  be  exchanged  for  the  long,  dark 
school-room,  and  the  desks  and  the  black-boards, 
and  "What  place  was  celebrated  for  its  manu- 
factures?" and  "What  place  for  the  intelligence 
of  its  inhabitants?"  the  odious  smell  of  slate  and 
slate-pencil ;  the  master's  ruler  over  the  hands  and 
his  cane  over  the  legs. 

But  Sunday  schools  have  of  late  years  become 
much  prettier  places  than  they  were  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  ago.  At  present  they  fit  them  up 
with  fountains,  nice  furniture,  and  warm-coloured 
carpets,  and  the  walls  are  decorated  with  mottoes 
and  texts  of  Scripture  in  red,  blue,  and  gilt.  They 
sing  sweetly  and  heartily,  and  the  conversational 
hubbub  of  voices  is  bright  and  exhilarating.  The 
confusion  of  tongues  and  subjects,  when  one  sits 
in  the  midst  of  it,  is  agreeable.  A  little  boy  near 
you  spells  out,  "Go  to  the  ant,  thou  sluggard."  In 
the  Bible  class  a  young  collegian  of  an  investi- 
gating and  somewhat  sceptical  turn  is  confounding 
the  wisdom  of  his  simple-minded  teacher,  who  is 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  55 

really  in  much  awe  of  him,  expostulates  with  his 
erudition  and  logical  superiority,  and  warns  him 
that  too  much  learning  has  made  him  mad.  Over 
the  way  the  bears  are  devouring  the  boys  who 
mocked  Elisha ;  while  a  fair  little  group  of  girls 
to  your  left  are  taking  down  the  priests  of  Baal 
to  a  destruction  which  they  and  their  teacher  in 
a  rather  matter-of-course  and  apathetic  manner 
appear  to  approve.  Considering  that  so  many 
human  beings  are  cut  to  pieces,  the  look  of  mild 
and  tacit  acquiescence  in  the  young  teacher's 
countenance  is  rather  dreadful,  and  it  is  some- 
what strange  that  the  scholars  should  inspect 
each  other's  dresses,  and  exchange  confidences, 
and  that  their  faces  should  fall  into  absent  and 
far-away  expressions. 

They  have  none  of  these  pretty  things  in  Eng- 
land. I  once  attended  a  sort  of  Sunday  school 
in  the  loft  of  a  warehouse  down  by  the  river, 
where  some  bargees  were  taught  The  young 
boatmen  walked  in  in  single  file  with  an  enor- 
mous clamping  of  boots,  which  must  have  been 
wooden,  and  an  expression  upon  their  counte- 
nances of  an  intention  to  behave  with  great 


56  English  Sundays  [IL 

decorum.  They  knelt  down  much  as  you  would 
suppose  a  row  of  Egyptian  obelisks  to  do,  and 
when  down  you  wished  that  they  would  never 
attempt  to  get  up  again.  One  young  man  did 
continue  kneeling  some  moments  longer  than  was 
necessary.  He  arose  with  as  much  haste  as  pos- 
sible, and  the  whole  of  them,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
immediately  crammed  their  handkerchiefs  down 
their  throats  (or  whatever  in  a  bargee's  wardrobe 
corresponds  to  a  handkerchief),  and  by  this  panto- 
mime expressed  their  readiness  to  choke  rather 
than  violate  propriety.  I  suppose  that  all  British 
Sunday  schools  are  modifications  of  this  one.  As 
the  children  who  compose  them  are  taken  alto- 
gether from  the  very  poorest,  a  look  of  squalor 
and  dirt  must  be,  I  imagine,  inseparable  from 
them. 

St.  Dominic's  had  no  Sunday  schools  like  ours, 
yet  the  young  people  of  the  church  had  some  ex- 
ceedingly pleasant  ways  of  spending  time.  For 
instance,  they  had  dances  during  the  Christmas 
holidays  in  the  school-room  of  the  church,  to  the 
great  scandal  of  some  of  the  neighbouring  parishes. 
A  small  sum  was  charged  for  admission.  The 


IT.]  and  London  Churches.  57 

room  was  prettily  decorated  with  holly,  evergreen, 
and  ivy ;  and  all  the  young  people  of  the  church 
came  and  danced.  Over  this  little  realm,  hid  in 
the  heart  of  London  trade,  the  vicar's  wife,  a 
person  of  much  sense  and  beauty,  exercised  a 
pleasant  rule.  Most  of  the  young  men  had  rather 
a  half-baked  look ;  the  best  of  them,  it  was  easy  to 
see,  were  not  quite  done.  But  my  experience  is 
that  gentle  and  refined  and  lady-like  women  are 
of  no  class  at  all ;  you  find  them  everywhere.  For 
centuries  the  beauty  of  London  women  has  been 
famous.  These  young  ladies,  indeed,  were  not 
quite  like  the  slight,  pale  slips,  and  faintly  tinted 
blue-bells  of  the  West-End.  Bloom  and  zone 
they  possessed  in  abundance.  The  faces  of  many 
of  them  were  exceedingly  comely.  They  had 
health,  spirits,  good-nature,  and  much  freedom 
and  humour.  St.  Dominic's  was  very  high,  or 
very  broad,  or  both,  or  neither,  I  forget  which ; 
but,  at  any  rate,  it  occupied  just  that  theological 
attitude  which  a  church  may  hold  and  give  charity 
balls  to  the  young  people.  At  such  times  the 
school-room  was  too  small,  and  they  secured  a 
hall  in  the  neighbourhood.  These  assemblages,  I 


58  English  Sundays  [n. 

think,  attracted  rather  a  higher  class  of  people 
than  the  dances  in  the  school-room.  Thither 
came  the  most  devout  and  charitable  ladies  of 
the  parish.  You  may  fancy  how  pleasant  it  was  ; 
the  church  at  Philippi  gave  me  the  right  hand  of 
fellowship.  I  was  permitted  to  waltz  with  Priscilla, 
to  gallop  with  Lydia,  and  to  balancez  and  turn  not 
a  few  of  the  chief  women  in  the  lancers. 

St.  Dominic's,  it  will  be  seen,  practised  a  very 
agreeable  type  of  Christianity.  It  must  not  be 
imagined,  however,  that  this  religion  was  in  very 
general  vogue.  I  heard  a  number  of  elderly 
people  say  that  they  never  heard  of  such  things 
in  their  lives  as  a  dance  in  a  church  school-room. 
But  a  great  many  strange  things  have  come  to 
pass  which  elderly  people  never  heard  of.  It 
really  seems  at  present  that  everybody  is  tolerated 
except  the  Evangelicals.  There  are  in  England 
at  present  a  great  many  kinds  of  people,  and  a 
great  many  kinds  of  belief.  They  have  a  strong, 
ably  expressed,  and  respectable  unbelief,  like  which 
we  have  nothing  in  America ;  and  lying  oddly 
by  the  side  of  it  is  a  good  deal  of  what  might 
be  termed  "religion  as  a  matter  of  course."  Thus, 


ii.]  and  London  Churches.  59 

it  is  mentioned  in  the  Blue  Books  that  certain 
children  in  the  agricultural  regions  cannot  tell 
who  made  them  ;  yet  this  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at,  when  so  many  of  the  learned  professors  in  the 
universities  say  they  don't  know.  As  a  specimen 
of  the  diversity  of  opinion  one  meets  with,  a 
young  lady  once  told  me  that  she  saw  no  reason 
to  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul ;  and  that 
women,  she  thought,  were  religious  because  they 
had  nothing  else  to  do.  The  next  day  a  young 
curate  assured  me  that  on  no  account  could  he 
marry  an  Evangelical  girl;  though  this  austerity, 
I  fancy,  was  a  reminiscence  of  a  severe  youth 
which  time  and  nature  had  mollified.  (He  pro- 
mised, by-the-way,  that  he  would  take  me  to  call 
upon  an  "Evangelical  girl,"  which  he  never  did.) 
Between  these  extremes  there  is  obviously  room 
for  some  shades  of  opinion.  Yet  widely  diverse 
as  are  the  notions  of  men,  all  alike  receive  the 
heritage  which  the  strong  religious  moods  of  early 
England  have  bequeathed  them.  They  yet  have 
the  churches  and  the  universities,  St.  Paul's,  the 
Abbey,  and  Magdalen  cloisters.  There  yet  re- 
main abodes  of  solitude  and  emotion  which  no 


60  English  Sundays  [IL 

modern  hands  can  imitate,  where  men  in  mighty 
cities  can  retire  apart  for  an  hour  from  the 
crowd,  and  dust,  and  turmoil. 

The  night  of  my  arrival  in  London  I  stopped 
at  a  hotel  not  far  from  Westminster.  It  was 
raining  during  the  evening,  and  I  did  not  go 
out,  but  sat  before  the  grate  in  the  smoking- 
room,  strangely  reflecting  upon  the  strange,  dark, 
new,  old  world  about  me.  It  was  one  of  those 
large  hotels  to  which  people  go  who  know 
nothing  about  London,  and  I  had  dined  in  a 
hushed  and  stately  dining-hall  instead  of  the 
dingy  little  coffee-room  one  should  always  seek. 
I  was  disappointed  with  the  arid  elegance  of  my 
surroundings,  and  began  to  fear  that  the  world 
I  was  to  enter  upon  the  morrow  might  be  as  vain 
and  modern.  There  was  a  young  clergyman 
sitting  near  me,  with  whom  I  entered  into  talk. 
He  was  the  rector  of  a  parish  somewhere  in 
Shropshire,  of  which  he  told  me  the  name,  and 
it  had  an  extremely  pleasant  country  sound. 
(The  reader  will  perhaps  think  me  impressible, 
but  why  should  I  tell  him  of  the  stupid  people 
I  met  ?)  I  had  never  met  a  man,  it  seemed  to 


IT.]  and  London  Churches.  61 

me,  with  a  manner  and  spirit  more  refined,  and 
when  afterwards  I  had  an  opportunity  to  know 
him  better,  that  impression  was  fixed  and 
strengthened.  His  countenance  and  behaviour 
united  gentleness  and  purity,  softness  and  dignity. 
In  the  course  of  the  conversation  he  spoke  of 
the  Abbey,  and  as  he  was  modestly  and  kindly 
communicative,  I  got  from  him  a  good  deal  about 
it.  He  took  a  pencil  and  sketched  me  some 
hints  of  its  architectural  history ;  and  he  told 
me  this  story,  which  is  perhaps  familiar  to  many 
of  my  readers,  but  was  new  to  me.  Ages  ago  a 
clear  stream  watered  the  grassy  margin  of  the 
river,  where  now  the  brown,  viscid  wave  of  the 
Thames  laves  its  stone  walls  and  embankments. 
Once  at  night  a  boatman  saw  upon  the  bank  a 
man  who  beckoned  him  to  come  nearer.  He 
rowed  him  across  the  stream  to  where  the  Abbey 
stood.  The  figure  entered,  and  immediately  the 
church  was  filled  with  light  and  music,  and  sing- 
ing angels.  It  was  St.  Peter  who  came  to  possess 
and  consecrate  his  Cathedral.  When  my  acquaint- 
ance retired  he  proposed  that  we  should  attend 
the  ten  o'clock  services  at  the  Abbey  the  next 


62  English  Sundays  [n 

morning.  "They  have  every  day,"  he  said,  "a 
morning  and  afternoon  service.  It  is  well  to  have 
some  place  in  the  heart  of  the  city  where  one  can 
be  apart  with  one's  God."  The  manner  of  the 
young  clergyman  was  constrained  and  diffident ; 
I  can  convey  no  impression  of  the  gentleness 
and  purity  with  which  these  words  were  uttered. 
The  next  morning  we  went  to  the  Abbey.  I 
have  never  been  since  so  distinctly  conscious  of 
the  mood  of  which  it  was  the  expression — if  it  be 
not  presumption  to  talk  of  distinctness  upon  such 
a  subject.  I  felt  in  the  authors  of  that  work  a 
sense  of  that  strong  exclusion  which  possesses  all 
artists  in  their  clearest  moments.  Had  the 
builders  not  had  the  sympathy  of  the  multitude, 
these  were  emotions  which,  when  brought  in  con- 
tact with  an  alien  and  astonished  atmosphere, 
would  have  appeared  how  wild,  how  strange ! 
They  could  not  have  survived  a  day  which  did 
not  comprehend  them.  But  the  aspiration  and 
exultation  had  been  changed  to  the  stone  of  the 
solid  globe.  The  thoughts  of  the  builders  may 
now  fly  hither  and  thither,  the  builders  die  and 
their  visions  with  them,  but  still  that  dream  en- 


n. J  and  London  Churches.  63 

tranced  remains  ;  the  towers  yet  linger,  the  arches 
exult,  the  saints  aspire;  so  I  thought  when  first 
those  aisles  and  ascending  vaults  were  revealed  to 
me,  and  when,  with  the  pious  few  gathered  under 
its  canopy,  I  first  heard  the  rejoicing  of  the 
choristers. 


Two  Visits  to  Oxford. 


A  NOTION,  I  believe,  still  prevails  very  generally 
that  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  the  universities  of 
the  English  aristocracy.  It  is  to  the  novelists  that 
we  owe  this  impression.  Years  ago,  these  univer- 
sities were  very  much  such  places  as  Bulwer  and 
Thackeray  have  painted  them.  But  they  have 
altered,  and  there  has  been  nothing  in  their  recent 
literature  to  mark  the  change.  They  still  exist  to 
a  large  portion  of  the  public  as  elegant  and 
aristocratic  as  ever.  To  the  imagination  of  the 
English  shop-girl,  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  yet 
peopled  by  a  race  of  the  most  delightful  heroes, 
who  breakfast  in  velvet,  who  have  valets  and  tigers 
and  tandems,  who  ride  and  shoot  and  borrow  each 
other's  money,  who  are  aristocratically  lavish  and 
aristocratically  hard  up. 


in.]  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  65 

Now,  on  the  contrary,  the  real  Oxford  does  not 
resemble  this  conception  in  the  least,  and  at  first 
sight,  perhaps,  the  social  life  of  the  place  is  even 
plainer  and  more  commonplace  than  we  should 
observe  it  to  be  on  closer  acquaintance.  One  has 
scarcely  stepped  into  the  streets  before  he  meets 
numbers  of  well-behaved,  modest  youth,  walking 
by  twos  and  threes,  not  in  droves,  as  students 
patrol  the  streets  of  an  American  university  town. 
There  cannot  be  found  in  Europe,  I  imagine,  a 
more  well-conducted,  orderly  generation  of  young 
men,  The  most  of  them  are  from  the  middle 
classes  and  are  upon  limited  incomes.  The  average 
allowance  of  an  Oxford  undergraduate  is  not  more 
than  1,200  dollars,  upon  which,  of  course,  magnifi- 
cence is  out  of  the  question.  The  number  of 
clergymen's  sons  is  very  great,  and  these,  as  a 
rule,  are  poor. 

It  is  thought  that  a  man  can  live  nicely  and 
entertain  moderately  on  1,500  dollars.  The  under- 
graduates have  a  dinner  "  in  Hall "  of  fish,  roast, 
and  sweet,  and  at  dinner  they  usually  drink  beer 
instead  of  wine.  They  have  opportunities  for 
luxury  and  elegance  in  their  breakfasts,  which 

* 


66  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  [in. 

they  make  very  inviting.  They  brew  at  Oxford 
a  claret  cup  with  which  nothing  of  the  same  kind 
one  tastes  anywhere  else  can  be  compared.  The 
young  men  are  exceedingly  kind  and  hospitable, 
and  they  possess  a  modesty  which  absolutely 
humiliates  one. 

An  English  youth,  as  I  saw  him  in  the  army 
or  at  the  universities,  who  is  sufficiently  well  born 
to  have  all  the  advantages  of  breeding,  and  suffi- 
ciently removed  from  exceptional  fortune  not  to 
be  tempted  to  folly  and  nonsense,  has  the  very 
perfection  of  behaviour.  He  has,  besides,  very 
nearly  the  perfection  of  right  feeling  towards  his 
associates,  which  cannot  be  said  of  him  a  few 
years  later.  I  knew  some  of  the  undergraduates 
of  Christ  Church  and  Baliol.  Under  their 
guidance  I  went  the  walks  of  the  universities, 
and  especially  remember  a  bath  in  the  river,  to 
which  I  consented  under  the  impression  that  it 
would  be  rather  an  interesting  and  romantic 
action,  and  would  furnish  a  pretty  souvenir,  but 
I  found  the  wave  of  the  Isis  much  too  cold  for 
comfort.  Christ  Church  is  rather  a  college  for 
the  sons  of  rich  men  ;  it  is  not  considered,  I 


in.]  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  67 

believe,  that  they  do  much  work  there.  Baliol  is 
one  of  the  working  colleges — those  which  take  the 
honours.  The  talk  of  the  Baliol  men,  I  thought, 
ran  rather  more  to  books  and  literature  than  the 
conversation  at  Christ  Church.  This  was  possibly 
due  to  the  fact  that  a  Christ  Church  man  was  to 
give  a  ball  that  week,  which  was  naturally  the 
topmost  matter  of  interest  among  the  men  of  his 
college.  At  Baliol,  when  the  pewter  cup  of  beer 
went  round,  of  which  each  took  a  cool  swig  in 
succession,  we  spoke  of  matters  which  are  rarely 
discussed  with  interest  except  at  universities  and 
by  very  young  men.  We  talked  of  the  poets,  and 
I  remember  one  young  gentleman's  enthusiasm 
swept  him  into  reciting  a  half  dozen  lines  of 
Greek. 

The  pride  in  scholarship,  and  the  respect  for  it, 
I  am  told,  are  very  much  on  the  decline.  Firsts 
and  double-firsts  are  not  held  in  such  esteem  as 
formerly.  One  hears  it  said  that  the  boating  and 
cricket  men  have  thrown  the  reading  men  into 
the  shade.  A  good  cricketer  is  asked  everywhere, 
and  talked  and  written  about,  and  pushed  in 
society.  Years  ago  many  good  stories  were  told 


68  Two  Visits  to  Oxford.  [in. 

of  the  extravagant  regard  which  successful  prize- 
men received  from  the  universities.  It  was  said  that 
a  senior  wrangler  from  Cambridge  happened  to 
enter  a  theatre  in  London  at  the  same  time  with 
the  Queen,  and,  hearing  the  plaudits,  placed  his 
hand  gracefully  over  his  heart,  and  bowed  his 
acknowledgments  to  the  audience.  The  old 
fashion,  no  doubt,  had  its  absurdities,  as  all 
fashions  have ;  but,  upon  the  whole,  it  was  more 
reasonable  than  the  present  one.  We  are  mis- 
taken if  we  fancy  that  it  is  mere  "  dig "  and 
memory  which  makes  the  successful  man  in  a 
university  examination.  It  requires  not  only 
persistence,  but  ability,  intelligence,  and  self-pos- 
'  session.  Of  course  where  many  work,  the  victory 
must  be  to  him  who  works  most  intelligently. 
The  scholar  and  the  boating  man  must  equally 
guard  against  over-training ;  and  at  the  hour  of 
examination  the  danger  of  losing  one's  head  is 
very  much  greater  than  in  a  boat-race.  The  stake 
is  so  great  that  the  strain  of  the  contest  seems  a 
cruel  one  for  very  young  men  to  undergo.  If  they 
win,  they  have  a  competency  for  the  rest  of  their 
days — a  thing  to  be  appreciated  in  England,  where 


in.]  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  69 

a  living  is  so  very  hard  to  make.  All  the  mothers 
and  cousins  are  waiting  breathlessly  for  the  issue. 
Such  competition  must,  I  fancy,  impart  an  almost 
abnormal  stimulus  to  the  moral  qualities.  In  the 
faces  of  the  stronger  men  one  observes  some 
"  silent  rages,"  which  the  intensity  of  the  struggle 
has  nursed.  Why  such  men  should  have  less  con- 
sideration than  a  cricketer  or  a  stroke-oar  one  can 
hardly  see.  A  strong  back  and  good  legs  are  fine 
gifts,  no  doubt ;  but  it  is  hard  to  understand  why 
their  possessor  should  be  so  petted  and  feted, 
should  have  his  picture  in  the  illustrated  papers, 
and  have  his  disorders  telegraphed  over  two  con- 
tinents. The  vignettes  in  the  papers  appear 
especially  absurd.  Why  should  boating  men 
have  pictures  made  of  their  faces  ?  They  should, 
it  would  seem,  stand  on  their  heads  and  have  their 
legs  taken. 

It  was  during  Commemoration  week  that  I  first 
visited  Oxford.  Tne  exercises  consist  of  the  con- 
ferring of  degrees  upon  distinguished  persons,  and 
the  recital  of  prize  poems  in  Greek,  Latin,  and 
English ;  and  I  may  incidentally  remark,  that  at  no 
ball  or  party  in  England  do  you  ever  see  so  many 


70  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  [IIL 

pretty  girls  as  at  a  university  commemoration. 
The  same  is  true,  however,  of  college  celebrations 
everywhere ;  girls  have  a  way  of  looking  their 
prettiest  at  them.  The  degree  conferred  upon 
strangers  at  Oxford  is  that  of  Doctor  of  Civil 
Law.  It  is  not  supposed  that  a  man  should  know 
anything  of  law  to  be  a  D.C.L.  Critics,  poets, 
politicians,  inventors,  noblemen,  for  being  noble- 
men, are  doctored.  The  first  commemoration  I 
saw  was  at  the  installation  of  Lord  Salisbury. 
The  candidates  were  marshalled  up  the  hall  from 
the  door  in  single  file,  all  dressed  in  red  gowns. 
The  Professor  of  Civil  Law,  Mr.  Bryce,  introduced 
each  in  a  Latin  speech,  which  contained  some 
happy  characterisation.  The  Chancellor  then  ad- 
dressed the  candidate  in  another  Latin  speech, 
applying  to  him  some  complimentary  expressions ; 
the  bar  was  raised,  and  he  shook  the  candidate  by 
the  hand,  who  sat  down  a  D.C.L.  Of  course,  as 
always  happens  in  England,  there  was  a  throng  of 
people  of  rank  who  went  ahead  of  abler  men. 
The  cheering  of  the  undergraduates,  however,  went 
some  distance  towards  equalising  things.  The  men 
who  received  the  warmest  applause  were  Liddon, 


in.]  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  71 

the  famous  preacher,  and  Arnold,  the  poet.  When  it 
came  to  the  latter  gentleman's  turn,  all  young  Ox- 
ford in  the  galleries  went  wild.  They  made  a  pro- 
digious cheering ;  the  young  men's  enthusiasm  was 
enough  to  stir  some  generous  blood  in  the  most 
sluggish  veins.  Of  course,  Mr.  Arnold's  compara- 
tive youthfulness  had  much  to  do  with  it,  and  his 
recent  attacks  upon  the  Dissenters  had  endeared 
him  to  the  clergymen's  sons  in  the  galleries.  The 
Chancellor,  who  had  been  throwing  about  his  issimcs 
profusely  among  people  of  whom  I  at  least  had  never 
heard,  contented  himself  with  calling  Mr.  Arnold, 
vir  ornatissime,  or  some  other  opprobrious  epithet — 
which,  as  one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  many  admirers,  I 
felt  called  upon  to  resent.  I  understood  after- 
wards, however,  that  Lord  Salisbury  had  con- 
jidered  the  propriety  of  addressing  him  as  O 
lucidissime  et  dulcissime  (most  light  and  most 
sweet),  which,  I  suppose,  would  scarcely  have 
done.  He  did  joke,  though,  in  one  case ;  he  ad- 
dressed the  editor  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  as 
vir  doctissime,  in  republica  litterarum  potentissime, 
and  at  that  everybody  was  amused.  The  incident 
gives  one  a  high  idea  of  the  power  which  inheres 


72  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [IIL 

in  reserve,  dignity,  and  position.  A  cabinet  minister, 
by  congratulating  an  editor  upon  his  formidable- 
ness  in  the  republic  of  letters,  creates  more  merri- 
ment than  could  a  harlequin  by  throwing  his  body 
into  twenty  contortions. 

The  bad  behaviour  of  the  undergraduates  in 
the  gallery  on  these  occasions  is  famous.  I  was 
present  at  two  commemorations,  and  can  testify- 
to  the  power  of  lung  and  the  great  good  humour 
and  animal  spirits  of  the  British  youth.  At  the 
last  commemoration  they  kept  up  an  incessant 
howl  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  I  cannot 
say  much  for  the  wit,  though,  I  believe,  they  do 
sometimes  hit  upon  something  worth  recording. 
When  Longfellow  was  made  D.C.L.  an  under- 
graduate proposed,  "  Three  cheers  for  the  red  man 
of  the  West,"  which,  I  am  told,  Mr.  Longfellow 
thought  very  good.  But,  of  course,  wit  and 
originality  are  just  as  rare  among  yelling  boys 
as  in  synods  and  parliaments.  The  scant  wit  is 
supplemented  by  the  more  widely  diffused  qualities 
of  impudence  and  vocal  volume.  When  the  Vice- 
Chancellor,  Dr.  Liddell,  of  Liddell  and  Scott's 
Dictionary  (the  accent  of  his  name,  by-the-way, 


in.]  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  73 

is  not  upon  the  last  syllable),  was  reading  a  Latin 
address,  some  one  would  call  out,  "  Now  construe." 
A  man  who  violated  the  canons  of  dress  by  ap- 
pearing in  a  white  coat  was  fairly  stormed  out 
of  the  place.  He  stood  it  for  an  hour  or  so, 
during  which  he  was  addressed :  "  Take  off  that 
coat,  sir."  "  Go  out,  sir."  "  Won't  you  go  at 
once  ?"  "  Ladies,  request  him  to  leave."  "Doctor 
Brown,  won't  you  put  that  man  out  ?"  (Then,  in  a 
conversational  and  moderate  tone),  "Just  put  your 
hand  upon  his  shoulder  and  lead  him  out."  After 
an  hour  of  it,  the  man  withdrew.  Each  successive 
group  of  ladies  was  cheered  as  it  came  in.  The 
young  men  would  exclaim  :  "  Three  cheers  for  the 
ladies  in  blue."  "  Three  cheers  for  the  ladies  in 
white,  brown,  red,  grey,"  &c.  The  poor  fellows 
who  read  the  prize  odes  and  essays  were  dreadfully 
bullied.  One  young  man  recited  an  English  poem, 
of  which  I  could  not  catch  the  burden,  but  from 
the  manner  of  its  delivery  I  should  say  that  it 
must  have  been  upon  the  saddest  subject  that  ever 
engaged  the  muse  of  mortal.  His  physiognomy 
and  his  tone  of  voice  alike  expressed  the  dismal 
and  the  disconsolate.  I  think  that  possibly  the 


74  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [m. 

extreme  sadness  of  his  manner  may  have  been 
induced  by  the  reception  rather  than  the  matter 
of  his  poem.  They  cat-called,  hooted  him,  and 
laughed  immeasurably  at  him.  One  young  gentle- 
man with  an  eye-glass  leaned  over  the  gallery,  and 
in  a  colloquial  tone  inquired,  "  My  friend,  is  that 
the  refrain  that  hastened  the  decease  of  the  old 
cow  ? ''  In  the  intervals  of  the  horrible  hootings, 
I  could  only  now  and  then  catch  a  word  like 
"  breeze "  or  "  trees."  By-and-by  the  galleries 
caught  the  swing  of  the  poet's  measure,  and  kept 
time  to  his  cadences  with  their  feet,  and  with  a 
rhythmical  roar  of  their  voices.  It  was  too  painful 
to  laugh  at.  One  felt  so  for  the  poor  fellow,  and 
more  still  for  his  mother  and  sisters,  who,  I  am 
sure,  were  there.  I  was  particularly  glad  to  notice 
among  the  men  who  last  year  were  compelled  to 
face  the  music,  a  man  who  the  year  before  had 
been  especially  energetic  in  the  galleries. 

To  see  an  English  university,  one  should  look 
at  it  from  the  don's  side  rather  than  the  under- 
graduates'. Undergraduates  are  of  exceedingly 
little  importance.  The  dons  are  the  essentials  of 
university  life ;  the  students  are  its  transient  and 


IIL]  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  75 

unimportant  incidents.  At  Yale,  when  we  were 
juniors,  we  thought  ourselves  of  consequence.  We 
considered  a  senior  greater  than  a  professor,  and 
the  tutors  we  pretended  to  hold  in  no  esteem  at 
all.  The  purpose  of  the  founders  of  the  University 
of  Oxford,  as  one  dispirited  and  conservative  old 
gentleman  told  me,  was  originally  not  study  alone, 
but  study  and  devotion.  The  colleges  were  asso- 
ciations of  men  who  gave  their  lives  to  learning 
and  religion.  The  education  of  youth  was  rather 
an  afterthought  and  an  incident.  Whether  or  not 
the  present  state  of  things  at  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge is  the  result  of  tradition,  it  is  certainly  true 
that  the  fellows  and  masters  of  the  colleges  con- 
stitute the  universities.  At  Cambridge  I  had 
letters  to  two  of  the  Fellows  of  Trinity ;  and  at 
Oxford  I  was  the  guest  for  a  week  of  a  friend 
who  was  a  fellow  of  Oriel.  The  spirit  and  social 
atmosphere  of  the  two  universities  seemed  to  me 
very  much  the  same ;  almost  any  statement  which 
might  be  true  of  the  society  of  either  would  be 
true  of  the  other. 

A  Fellow,  as  everybody  knows,  passes  a  good 
examination,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  or  until 


76  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [in. 

marriage,  draws-  from  the  university  an  income 
of  from  1,000  to  1,500  dollars.  For  this  he  is 
under  no  obligation  to  return  any  labour.  Those 
who  reside  at  the  universities  are  usually  tutors 
or  lecturers,  and  for  these  services  of  course 
receive  extra  pay.  On  marriage  they  are  com- 
pelled to  resign  their  fellowships.  The  men  who 
wish  to  marry,  obtain,  if  they  can,  livings  in  the 
Church,  school-inspectorships,  or  appointments 
under  government.  Recently  the  universities 
have  been  pressing  the  abolition  of  the  restriction 
upon  marriage,  and  expecting  it  from  every  suc- 
cessive parliament.  It  is  both  pleasant  and  pain- 
ful to  think  of  the  number  of  interesting  young 
couples  who  at  this  moment  are  waiting  for  a 
word  from  the  British  Government.  A  very 
pretty  tale  one  might  make  of  it.  The  story  of 
another  Evangeline,  waiting  through  long  years 
upon  the  slow  steps  of  legislation,  and  rising  each 
morning  to  scan  with  eager  eyes  the  parliamentary 
proceedings,  might  form  a  good  subject  for  a 
play  or  a  poem.  I  examined  very  few  of  the 
considerations  in  favour  of  the  reform.  This  one 
presents  itself,  however — men  are  always  strangely 


in.]  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  77 

tempted  to  what  is  forbidden  -them  ;  celibacy 
may  not  be  so  irksome,  if  they  know  they  may 
marry  when  they  choose.  Upon  the  other  side  I 
heard  a  bachelor  urge  that  the  university  would 
cease  to  be  such  an  equal,  reasonable,  sensible 
place  as  it  has  been  heretofore.  The  women 
would  introduce  discord.  The  wife  of  a  Head 
would  no  doubt  think  herself  above  a  poor  tutor's, 
and  would  give  herself  airs. 

Were  it  not  for  the  peculiar  and  easily  ex- 
plained susceptibility  of  college  tutors,  the  cir- 
cumstances of  their  bachelor  life  are  so  delightful 
that  one  might  wonder  that  even  matrimony  can 
tempt  them  away  from  it.  The  physical  life  is 
looked  after  very  well.  The  dinners  are  fair  and 
the  lodgings  comfortable.  The  bachelor  can  do 
there  what  is  difficult  to  do  elsewhere  :  he  can 
live  well  and  dine  in  pleasant  company.  He  is 
not  solitary  as  at  a  club,  and  the  company  of 
congenial  men  who  have  the  same  interests  with 
himself  makes  the  commons'  dinner  infinitely 
better  than  any  table  d'Jiote.  The  dons'  rooms 
are  of  all  degrees  of  comfort  and  elegance.  Some 
of  them  are  very  bare ;  others  are  pretty  and 


78  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [in. 

well  furnished.  The  rooms  of  men  who  have 
been  some  time  at  the  university,  and  who  have 
a  taste  for  elegance,  grow  to  be  pretty ;  and  a 
pleasantly-arranged  room,  I  believe,  must  always 
be  the  result  of  time.  At  Merton  College,  Oxford, 
I  saw  an  apartment  of  which  the  whole  front 
had  been  made  into  a  bow-window,  facing  upon 
a  green  and  humid  quadrangle.  Its  occupant,  I 
remember,  showed  me,  among  his  curiosities,  a 
side-board  of  the  i/th  century,  on  which  was 
carved  in  very  bold  relief  a  good  part  of  the 
events  of  Genesis.  There  was  a  figure  of  the 
Lord,  about  as  long  as  your  finger,  walking  in 
the  garden ;  and  Adam  and  Eve  and  the  Serpent 
were  engaged  in  conversation  about  the  Tree  of 
the  Knowledge  of  Good  and  Evil.  Adam,  strange 
to  say,  was  accompanied  by  a  dog  of  some  choice 
breed,  which  smelt  about  his  heels  in  a  rather 
clumsy  wooden  manner,  but  very  much  as  fallen 
canine  nature  is  yet  in  the  habit  of  doing.  Such 
elegance  and  curiousness  are  unusual,  I  suppose, 
though  many  of  the  rooms  are  cozy  and  inviting. 
The  ceilings  are  low,  and  low  ceilings  are  warm 
and  pleasant.  One  is  delighted  with  the  sense 


in.]  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  79 

of  the  ancient  atmosphere,  the  ample  grate,  the 
books  upon  the  shelves  and  strewn  about  the 
tables. 

At  Cambridge  I  left  my  cards  and  letters,  and 

in  walking  about  the  town  missed  seeing  J , 

of  Trinity,  who  had  called  in  my  absence,  but  I 
chanced  to  meet  the  dean  of  one  of  the  smaller 
colleges,  whom  I  had  known  in  London,  and  I 
accepted  his  invitation  to  his  college.  I  went 
with  him  the  pretty  walk  behind  the  colleges, 
and,  reaching  his  room,  found  there  several  of  the 
tutors  who  had  strolled  in,  and  were  sitting  in  the 
dusk  before  the  grate,  waiting  for  dinner.  The 
dining-hall  of  the  college  was  small  and  dimly 
lighted.  There  were  but  three  or  four  of  the 
Fellows  present,  and  we  sat  together  upon  a  raised 
platform.  An  undergraduate  read  a  long  grace 
in  Latin.  I  sat  with  my  back  to  the  wall,  so  that 
I  could  look  over  the  Fellows  down  upon  the 
tables,  dim  and  candle-lit,  where  the  young  men 
dined.  The  fewness  of  the  undergraduates,  and 
the  quiet  and  dark  of  the  hall  gave  one  a 
feeling  something  like  that  which  children  have 
when  huddled  under  a  big  umbrella.  Sitting  in 


8o  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [in 

talk  with  these  intelligent,  unaffected  scholars, 
and  having  one's  heart  warmed  by  their  genial 
converse  and  kind  attention,  and  with  one's  only 
distraction  to  peep  into  the  dim  and  quiet  ends 
of  the  room,  how  blessed  seemed  these  men's  oc- 
cupations, how  pleasant  the  tenor  of  their  lives ; 
how  attractive  appeared  the  comfort,  the  poetry, 
and  solid  happiness  there  is  in  learning !  The 
hall  at  Trinity  is,  I  believe,  the  great  place  to 
see.  "  If  they  ask  you  to  dine  there,  mind  you 
go,"  I  was  told.  But  who  does  not  know  the 
pleasure  of  finding  beauties  and  curiosities  of 
which  the  almanacs  say  nothing !  I  liked  to 
think  that  the  earth  contained  so  happy  a  spot 

as  this  dim  hall  of  College,  unpraised  of 

men  and  unheralded  by  the  guide-books.  I  was 
more  diverted  with  the  old  side-board  at  Merton 
than  with  the  Tower  of  London. 

The  next  morning  the  Dean  and  myself  accepted 

an  invitation  to  breakfast  from  J ,  of  Trinity. 

We  climbed  up  one  of  those  dark,  narrow,  per- 
pendicular winding  staircases,  and  knocked  upon 
his  door,  and  our  host  came  out  to  meet  us.  He 
introduced  me  to  two  or  three  others  whom  he 


in.]  Two    Visits  to   Oxford.  81 

had  invited.  It  was  raining,  I  remember,  and  the 
windows  of  his  room  looked  down  upon  a  drip- 
ping garden  (garden  is  the  name  given  to  a  lawn 
planted  with  trees),  and  a  little  arched  bridge 
which  crossed  a  stream  like  a  mill-race.  The 
drops  fell  rapidly  against  the  window-panes,  and 
it  was  dark  and  warm  in  the  large,  low,  old  room 
where  we  breakfasted.  My  host's  conversation 
was  light  and  witty,  and  the  talk  of  the  table 
ran  much  to  politics,  and  that  pleasantest  and 
most  instructive  kind  of  discourse,  gossip.  A 
good  deal  was  said  of  education,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  pressing  political  questions  for  Great 
Britain.  One  gentleman,  who  was  a  school- 
inspector,  had  been  driving  about  England,  look- 
ing at  the  private  schools  everywhere  along  his 
route,  and  examining  the  teachers  and  scholars. 
With  the  exception  of  the  examination,  it  struck 
me  that  this  must  be  a  very  pleasant  occupation. 
There  were  present  at  this  breakfast  several 
men  who,  I  was  told,  were  very  clever;  and 
again,  as  elsewhere  in  Cambridge  and  Oxford, 
was  I  struck  with  a  quality  of  theirs,  which  if  I 
praise  they  may  laugh  at  me — I  mean  their 

Q 


82  Two    Visits  to   Oxford.  [in. 

modesty.  Some  of  them  were  even  diffident.  It 
was  a  pleasure  to  look  at  these  men,  and  think, 
"  You  know  ever  so  much  about  international  law, 
and  you  about  the  Greek  philosophy,  and  nobody 
knows  what  you  can  tell  us  about  the  particles." 
My  host  was  a  lecturer  upon  Plato,  I  believe. 
We  sat  together  for  an  hour  after  breakfast,  and 
I  fell  to  admiring  audibly  his  circumstances  and 
employments.  Our  conversation  was  upon  topics 
not  usually  touched  upon  by  men  on  the  first 
day  of  an  acquaintance.  One  of  the  drawbacks 
of  travel  is  that  natural  delicacy  which  forbids 
men  who  are  strangers  from  speaking  upon  any 
but  trivial  subjects.  The  necessity  is  sometimes 
rather  hard  upon  travellers,  who  are  always 
strangers.  But  I  remember  the  Trinity  lecturer 
making  such  a  remark  as  this — that  no  course 
of  philosophical  reading  ever  gave  satisfactory 
opinions  to  anybody.  Still,  it  is  very  well  to 
have  tested  for  oneself  the  vanity  of  such  a  way 
of  getting  at  the  truth.  But  it  is  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  they  would  appreciate  their  advan- 
tages ;  scarcely  anybody  does.  My  host  walked 
with  me  about  the  colleges,  and  promised,  if  I 


in.]  Two   Visits  to   Oxford.  83 

stayed,  that  I  should  see  an  old  gentleman  who 
had  been  Lord  Byron's  tutor  when  that  young 
nobleman  was  an  undergraduate  at  Trinity. 

At  Oxford  I  was  for  a  week  the  guest  of  a 
friend  who  was  a  Fellow  of  Oriel.  An  Oriel 
Fellowship  has  always  been,  I  am  told,  the  under- 
graduate's blue-ribbon ;  and  I  presume  that  the 
men  I  met  there  were  very  excellent  specimens 
of  Oxford.  The  undergraduates  had  left  the  uni- 
versity, and  the  Fellows  of  Oriel  dined,  not  in  hall, 
but  in  the  wine-room.  A  curious  feature  of  the 
meal,  the  grace,  has  been,  I  believe,  incorrectly 
given  by  visitors.  Before  dinner  they  say  "  Bene- 
dictus  benedicat,"  and  after  dinner — i.e.,  just  before 
dessert — somebody  drops  his  head  in  the  middle 
of  the  talk  and  says,  "  Benedict o  bencdicatur"  The 
room  is  hung  round  with  pictures  of  the  ancient 
and  recent  worthies  of  the  college.  A  fine  and 
large  likeness  of  Clough  looked  down  upon  the 
warm  and  pleasant  scene.  This  sort  of  living, 
compared  with  the  only  bachelor  modes  of  exist- 
ence I  had  ever  known — a  club,  a  boarding- 
house,  or  a  hotel — seemed  perfection.  And  if  the 
old  wainscoted  room  and  the  company  of  the 


84  Two  .Visits  to  Oxford.  [in. 

genfal  scholars  was  so  pleasing,  what  did  I  think 
one  evening  when,  dining  at  Merton  College,  famed 
for  the  beauty  of  its  gardens,  coffee  was  served  in 
a  rustic  seat  on  the  lawn,  and,  as  the  summer 
evening  came  down  upon  the  grass  and  the  still 
trees,  and  a  star  or  two  came  out  and  brightened, 
and  the  towers  over  us  and  about  us  grew  grayer 
and  darker,  we  sat  and  talked,  and  listened  far 
into  the  twilight  ? 

In  a  week's  stay  about  Oxford  I  saw  it  in  many 
forms  and  moods.  An  Oxford  quadrangle  is  the 
hoariest  and  most  ancient  spectacle  in  my  ex- 
perience. Shut  up  in  one  of  them  at  the  time 
of  sun-down  the  impression  is  particularly  strong. 
One  feels  the  planet  to  have  aged.  I  found  it 
difficult  to  conceive  that  a  scene  yet  strong  with 
the  strength  of  Nature  remained  anywhere  Li  the 
world.  It  was  hard  to  think  that  beyond  the 
swelling  and  sinking  Atlantic  the  blue  line  of 
the  Alleghany  trembled  over  the  quiet  harvests  of 
a  familiar  valley,  or  that  the  stream  of  the  yellow 
Missouri  drowned  with  disconsolate  floods  his 
black  slimy  islands  of  sand. 

Some  of  the  quadrangles  were  very  gray  and 


in.]  Two    Visits  to   Oxford.  85 

sombre :  others  were  warm  and  happy.  In  the 
cloisters  of  Magdalen  they  have  found  the  flower 
which  best  harmonises  with  the  associations  of  the 
place.  It  is  the  wild  rose.  Upon  a  mid-summer 
afternoon,  when  Oxford  is  deserted — when  no  feet 
but  your  own  are  heard  in  the  cloisters — when  the 
blue  air  of  the  quadrangle  is  warmed  to  the  fill  by 
the  sun — there  is  that  in  the  odour  of  the  flower  of 
wild,  yet  sweet,  of  gay,  yet  yearning,  which  harmo- 
nises well  with  the  spongy  turf,  with  the  moist  air 
thrilled  by  the  sunshine,  with  the  cold  recesses  of 
the  cloister  and  the  benign  silence  with  which  the 
scene  regards  your  footfall. 

The  character  for  learning  of  the  men  I  met  at 
the  universities  stands,  I  suppose,  as  high  as  that  of 
the  same  class  of  men  anywhere  in  the  world.  It 
is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  dwell  upon  their  candour 
and  kindness.  I  discovered  scarcely  anything  to 
find  fault  with.  "We  grow  a  very  disagreeable 
specimen  of  prig  here,"  said  one.  I  did  not  see 
him.  Here  and  there  I  met  a  man  whose  playful- 
ness had  a  somewhat  learned  flavour  and  whose 
speeches  might,  when  repeated,  have  had  a  sound 
of  pedantry,  but  the  awkwardness  was  accompanied 


86  Two    Visits  to   Oxford.  [in. 

by  a  simplicity  which  made  it  rather  attractive.  I 
must  say,  though,  that  the  wit  was  a  little  wordy — 
but  that  is  true  of  the  wit  of  young  college  tutors 
everywhere  ;  their  jokes  may  be  said  to  have  ex- 
tension, their  jests  and  quips  remind  one  of  the 
gambols  of  a  Newfoundland  pup.  The  older  men, 
where  they  were  not  more  solemn,  had  rather  more 
pith  and  point.  But  the  wit  of  scholars  is  apt  to 
be  diluted,  just  as  is  that  of  the  man  of  fashion, 
though  from  a  different  cause.  The  wit  of  the 
man  of  fashion  shares  the  general  feebleness  of  his 
nature  ;  that  of  the  scholar  is  poor  because  he  does 
not  see  enough  of  life ;  because  the  situations  in 
which  he  is  an  actor  or  a  looker-on  are  not  suffi- 
ciently numerous,  various,  and  rapidly  successive. 

What  especially  strikes  the  visitor  at  the  uni- 
versities is  their  way  of  speaking  the  unadulterated 
truth  ;  it  does  not  occur  to  them  that  anything 
else  should  be  spoken.  They  have  their  pretenders 
and  humbugs  in  England  just  as  here — men  who 
live  and  thrive  by  the  inevitable  folly  and  inatten- 
tion of  the  mass  of  the  community.  Some  poor 
offspring  of  a  lucky  talent  and  a.  lucky  opportunity 
wins  applause  and  place  and  profit  with  scarcely  a 


in.]  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  87 

struggle.  Some  light  creature  gets  the  start  of 
this  tremendous  world,  and  is  swept  onward  like  a 
leaf.  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  the  places  to 
hear  these  men  called  by  their  right  names.  It  is 
just  as  well  that  most  people  do  not  indulge  in 
such  plain  speaking,  for  most  people  would  be  apt 
to  be  mistaken.  But  at  the  universities  there  are 
many  thinking,  educated  men,  whose  opinions 
are  tolerably  apt  to  be  correct.  They  are  very 
little  troubled  with  that  charity  which  will  say  no 
ill  of  your  neighbour  because  the  report  of  it  may 
come  to  your  neighbour's  ear.  They  have  no  axes 
to  grind,  no  ulterior  aims,  no  policies.  One  evening 
at  Oxford  a  well-known  name  was  mentioned,  and 
the  whole  company  at  once  agreed  that  he  was  an 
ass.  That  was  my  own  opinion ;  but  had  I  men- 
tioned it  among  people  more  polite  and  circum- 
spect, I  should  have  been  thought,  if  not  a  jealous 
and  deprecatory  person,  at  least  a  very  rash  one 
— perhaps  one  of  those  envious  detractors  who 
go  about  tearing  the  reputations  of  the  great  and 
good.  The  man  v/as  certainly  dull  and  talkative, 
yet  he  deserved  respect  of  a  kind.  There  was  an 
acerbity,  however,  in  the  comment  which  his  folly 


88  Two   Visits  to  Oxford.  [ILL 

did  not  quite  explain.  Why  should  they  so  go  out 
of  the  way  to  abuse  a  comparatively  unimportant 
man  for  merely  being  an  ass  ?  This  point  was 
naYvely  met  by  one  ingenuous  young  accuser,  who 
said,  "  After  all,  the  only  thing  I  have  against  him 
is  that  he's  a  successful  man." 

English  writers  upon  this  country  have  given  us 
the  impression  that  their  scholars  are  less  men  of 
the  world  than  our  own.  I  found  tne  young  men 
at  Oxford  and  Cambridge  very  greatly  interested 
in  matters  outside  their  universities.  Many  of 
them,  I  thought,  were  piqued  by  the  social  power 
which  the  aristocracy  still  retains  in  England,  for 
no  men  are  better  placed  than  themselves  to  see 
how  belated  is  the  entire  face  of  their  society. 
Not  a  few  of  them  have  aspirations  for  political 
careers.  Many  are  barristers  and  have  chambers 
in  London,  some  tew  conducting  cases,  but  many 
more  waiting  for  them.  For  those  who  are  only 
students  and  citizens  of  the  world,  the  greatest 
city  in  Europe  is  but  two  hours  away.  It  is  they 
who  get  most  out  of  university  life.  They  may 
infest,  if  they  choose,  those  old  quadrangles  of 
Oxford  for  a  lifetime ;  the  ends  of  Europe  are 


in.]  Two    Visits  to  Oxford.  89 

within  two  days  oi  them.  The  physical  man  and 
the  eating,  drinking,  and  sleeping  man  are  well 
enough  cared  for.  They  have  the  great  libraries, 
and  the  constant  society  oi"  cultivated  men  in  such 
numbers  that  they  may  look  about  among  them- 
selves for  suitable  acquaintance.  They  have  for  a 
home  one  of  the  most  beautiful  places  in  the 
world.  There  is  scarcely  a  happy  circumstance  of 
a  scholar's  life  which  fortune  and  the  generous 
wisdom  of  the  men  who  have  been  through 
centuries  the  custodians  of  their  university  have 
denied  them, 


The  British  Upper  Class  in 
Fiction. 


"NOT  you,  but  the  house  derides  me,"  said  the 
wolf  to  the  kid  in  the  fable.  This  is  the  answer 
which  society  makes  to  any  insolent  or  arrogant 
individual  who  happens  to  be  out  of  its  reach. 
Fortunate  men  everywhere  are  apt  to  fall  into 
the  kid's  mistake ;  and  of  all  swells,  none  cherishes 
the  delusion  so  honestly  as  an  Englishman. 
He  stands  there  protected  in  that  insouciance 
which  the  novelists  admire,  and  which  he  himself 
deems  the  consummate  result  of  history  and 
human  progress,  by  defences  which  are  none  of 
his  making.  The  radical  claim,  the  fundamental 
distinction  of  an  Englishman  of  the  upper  class 
is,  that  no  man  can  get  the  better  of  him  in 
hauteur.  The  neighbourhood  of  the  most  op- 


iv.]     The  British  Upper  Class  in  Fiction.  91 

pressive  or  confusing  personality  will  run  off  him 
like  water.  He  will  flush  as  he  passes  no  man  ; 
no  man  can  give  him  two  fingers.  Should  by 
any  chance  his  bosom  acknowledge  impression  or 
trepidation,  his  exterior  shall  be  calm  as  stone. 
And  he  is  proud  to  think  that  this  gift  of  his  is 
not  the  accident  of  his  station  or  his  circum- 
stances, but  is  an  inherent  virtue  of  his  own,  of 
which  adverse  fortune  cannot  rob  him.  He  may 
be  deprived  of  health,  money,  and  friends ;  he 
may  be  baffled  and  beaten  here,  and  lost  here- 
after ;  but  it  is  his  belief  and  consolation  that 
the  time  can  never  come  when  he  may  be  snubbed. 

To  this  it  may  be  said,  that  the  courage  which 
confronts  a  future  or  a  possible  evil  is  a  very 
easy  one.  Difficulty,  until  we  meet  it  face  to 
face,  is  an  unknown  quantity.  It  is  x;  when 
really  upon  us,  it  becomes  a  +  b.  He  who  is  in 
the  midst  of  the  difficulty  he  challenged  from  a 
distance,  may  with  perfect  consistency  retire, 
claiming  that  when  he  made  the  engagement,  he 
had  not  sufficient  data  to  go  upon.  He  agreed 
to  encounter  x,  not  a  +  b. 

Undoubtedly  the  qualities  which  constitute  the 


92  The  British   Upper  Class  [iv. 

distinction  in  the  s\ven!**ar£r'precisely  not  the 
qualities  which  consjgj^te  success  in  the  great 
struggle  of  man  for  subsistence.  The  "  survivors  " 
of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  have  succeeded  by  alert 
attention,  rather  than  by  an  elegant  inattention. 
The  monkey  that  saw  the  apple  first  got  it ;  the 
chimpanzee  that  first  saw  the  wild  cat  was  the 
first  to  get  away  from  him.  In  the  "  incoherent " 
ages,  when  one  man  met  in  the  forest  another 
who  was  carrying  a  sword  or  a  spear,  he  did  not 
saunter  by,  relying  upon  his  own  unconscious 
majesty,  and  the  impressibility  of  his"  adversary, 
as  a  protection  against  a  blow  in  the  back  of  the 
head.  He  was  the  best  man  who  had  the  most 
and  the  quickest  perceptions,  rather  than  he  who 
had  the  fewest  and  the  slowest. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  true  of  those 
remote  and  uncertain  ages,  in  society,  as  we 
know  it,  the  alert,  attentive  man  plainly  gets 
ahead  of  the  inattentive  one.  A  certain  suavity 
and  deference  in  his  dealings  with  others  will 
not  hurt  him.  He  cannot  ignore  the  man  out 
of  whom  he  makes  money.  He  cannot  snub  a 
client,  a  customer,  or  a  patient  with  impunity. 


iv.]  in  Fiction.  93 

The  swell,  therefore,  whom  adverse  fortune  com- 
pels to  take  his  chances  with  other  men,  has 
either  to  fail,  or  to  relinquish  his  superb  be- 
haviour, and  to  change  his  principle  of  elegant 
unconsciousness  into  one  of  alert  attention.  He 
may  say  that  he  will  die  first,  which  would  per- 
haps be  the  more  heroic  and  graceful  exit  from 
the  difficulty,  providing  he  died  at  once.  But 
he  thus  registers  himself  among  the  defeated  and 
fails — the  very  thing  it  was  the  boast  of  his 
ancestors  that  they  did  not  do.  Should  he 
happen  to  have  hostages  to  fortune,  in  the  shape 
of  wife  and  children,  the  complexion  of  his  case 
would  be  entirely  altered.  To  take  defeat  for 
himself  would  be  his  right ;  to  accept  it  for 
those  dependent  upon  him  would  be  quite  another 
thing.  It  is  pretty  plain,  then,  that  the  swell  is 
very  much  in  the  position  of  the  kid  upon  the 
house-top.  If  he  were  a  lawyer's  clerk,  of  course 
these  fine  ways  would  have  to  cease.  If  he  were 
on  the  staff  of  a  popular  weekly,  and  had  to 
dance  in  the  liveliest  paragraphs  under  the  whip 
of  the  managing  editor,  or  the  proprietors,  or 
the  public,  he  would  find  his  unconsciousness 


94  The  British   Upper  Class  [iv. 

and  hauteur  very  inconvenient.  He  would,  no 
doubt,  consider  the  editor  a  demagogue,  an  in- 
accurate, semi-honest,  and  wholly  uneducated 
person ;  would  gnash  his  teeth  in  secret  over  the 
failure  of  the  proprietors  duly  to  appreciate  their 
own  vulgarity,  and  would  heartily  despise  the 
silly  public;  but  when  this  inadequate  revenge 
had  been  taken,  there  would  be  nothing  left  for 
him  to  do. 

It  was  very  easy  to  see  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  young  Englishman  of  the  class  of  which 
I  am  speaking  did  change  his  manners  as  soon 
as  his  circumstances  changed.  Men  of  precisely 
the  same  claims  of  birth  had  a  very  different 
behaviour.  Those  who  had  to  make  their  way 
acquired  a  more  eager,  and,  as  a  rule,  a  more 
complaisant  manner  than  their  luckier  cousins. 
Even  diplomatists  and  private  secretaries  to  heads 
of  departments  were  evidently  alive  to,  and 
anxious  to  conciliate  the  good  opinions  of  others. 
At  the  clubs  it  was  not  difficult  to  pick  out, 
from  their  more  alert  behaviour,  the  men  whose 
fortunes  were  capable  of  improvement,  and  who 
were  on  the  look-out  to  better  them.  In  a  word, 


IY.]  in  Fiction.  95 

when  in  England,  I  saw  that  a  swell,  so  soon  as 
he  perceives  that  his  distinctions  do  not  pay, 
relinquishes  them. 

It  will  be  seen  that  these  distinctions  appeal 
for  admiration  to  persons  in  a  certain  middle 
condition  of  education.  Those  who  appreciate 
such  graces  to  the  full  must  be  somewhat  civilised 
and  yet  somewhat  immature.  A  degree  of  im- 
pressibility in  the  men  who  look  on  is  the 
condition  of  the  exercise  of  the  swell's  talent. 
What  sort  of  impression  would  insouciance  make 
upon  a  hungry  tiger  ?  Nor  would  it  impress  an 
educated  and  acute  man  who  insists  upon  sub- 
mitting reverie  to  the  test  of  definition  and  cri- 
ticism. It  is  to  the  shop-boy,  and  the  writer 
for  the  spring  annual,  that  such  graces  appeal. 

The  aristocracy  has  received,  from  time  to 
time,  very  various  treatment  at  the  hands  of. 
literature.  The  writers  of  the  age  of  Queen 
Anne — a  keen  and  critical  race — never  gave  them 
any  very  respectful  consideration.  Later  in  the 
century  the  novelists  dealt  with  them  in  a  very 
truthful  and  sensible  fashion.  Fielding,  I  re- 
member, somewhere  takes  occasion  to  explain  in 


9  6  The  British    Upper  Class  [iv. 

a  foot-note  that  by  the  "  mob "  he  does  not 
mean  the  common  people,  but  the  coarse  and 
the  ignoble  in  every  rank.  In  those  days  the 
aristocracy  possessed  real  power.  When  their 
power  had  come  to  an  end,  and  they  retained 
only  their  social  precedence,  the  admiration  of 
their  class  superiorities  seems  to  have  begun. 
It  is  a  somewhat  curious  fact  that  Bulwer,  Dis- 
raeli, the  Kingsleys,  and  other  writers  of  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century,  have  expressed  an  admira- 
tion for  the  upper  classes  which  is  new  in 
English  literature.  Nothing  of  the  kind  is  to 
be  found  in  their  great  predecessors,  Scott,  Miss 
Austen,  and  Miss  Edgeworth.  The  reason  is,  I 
suppose,  that  blessings  brighten  as  they  take 
their  flight.  The  strong,  whether  they  be  good 
or  bad,  need  no  apology.  Praise  of  them  is 
rather  a  superfluity  and  an  impertinence.  But 
when  power  had  slipped  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
upper  classes,  to  justify  the  social  precedence 
that  remained,  people  began  to  look  about  for 
something  of  an  inherent  and  permanent  nature 
to  admire.  The  gradual  contraction  of  their 
privileges  removed,  too,  the  "  wicked  lord "  from 


iv.]  in  Fiction.  97 

romance.  His  opportunities  of  wickedness  were 
gone.  Earls  could  no  longer  kidnap  pretty 
women.  Moreover,  the  rise  of  a  powerful  class 
of  merchants,  into  a  social  prominence  scarcely 
less  than  that  enjoyed  by  them  in  Cromwell's 
time,  fixed  the  attention  of  society  upon  the 
graces  of  the  older  aristocracy.  The  poor  clergy- 
man was  glad  to  feel  that  the  people  who  snubbed 
his  wife  were  nobodies  by  the  side  of  his  patron. 
It  was  perhaps  rather  pleasant  to  a  banker's 
clerk  to  know  that  there  were  persons  before 
whom  his  own  despot  would  have  to  take  off 
his  hat. 

But  the  novel  has  been  the  peculiar  literary 
staple  of  the  last  thirty  years.  The  upper  classes 
have  been  of  great  use  to  the  playwrights  and  the 
story-tellers.  The  throng  of  tutors,  governesses, 
and  young  professional  men  who  write  for  the  Lon- 
don magazines,  have  relied  much  upon  the  dramatic 
capabilities  of  their  unequal  society.  The  fortunate 
classes  anywhere  will  always  be  excellent  material 
for  art,  providing  those  classes  are  known  to  the 
entire  society.  The  people  like  to  look  at  them. 
They  take  the  sort  of  pleasure  in  them  which  they 

H 


98  The  British   Upper  Class.  [iv. 

experience  at  a  fete  or  a  pantomime.  They  wish 
them  well,  as  they  like  the  novels  and  the  plays  to 
end  happily.  The  converse  is  also  evident.  So 
soon  as  these  classes  cease  to  appear  fortunate 
they  cease  to  be  attractive.  The  cause  of  the 
Queen's  recent  unpopularity  is  to  be  found,  not 
in  her  seclusion,  nor  in  the  discontent  of  the 
tradesmen  who  live  upon  Court  patronage,  but  in 
the  natural  aversion  of  men  to  the  lachrymose  and 
the  melancholy.  The  elegant  classes  here  cannot 
be  used  to  very  great  advantage,  because  a  farmer 
in  Illinois  has  a  most  indistinct  and  hazy  notion 
of  the  habits  of  a  person  of  fashion  in  New  York 
or  Boston.  Moreover,  here  nobody  knows  exactly 
who  these  classes  are.  Abroad,  this  "  fine  "  society 
is  the  most  distinguished  and  conspicuous.  Here 
it  is  the  little  set  whose  particular  boast  is  that 
"  nobody  knows  anything  about  it." 

The  reaction  which  followed  the  French  Revo- 
lution ;  the  glory  to  which  England  attained  during 
the  first  third  of  the  present  century,  to  which  she 
was  certainly  led  by  the  upper  classes,  and  upon 
which  she  lived  until  very  lately ;  the  gradual 
diminution  of  the  privileges  of  the  upper  class 


iv.]  in  Fiction.  99 

and  the  sense  of  security  from  their  encroachments 
— all  these  things  disposed  the  English  people  to 
think  very  favourably  of  their  aristocracy.  Their 
impressibility  and  credulity  and  their  curiosity 
about  the  aristocracy  have  been  fed  by  the 
novelists.  Many  popular  mistakes  concerning  the 
manners  of  the  "  great "  have  thus  been  encouraged. 
Thackeray  even  has  lent  countenance  to  the  super- 
stition that  the  young  men  are  marked  by  a  certain 
graceful  and  reckless  generosity.  It  would  seem 
natural  that  men  who  have  assured  wealth,  and  a 
station  at  the  top  of  society,  should  exhibit  towards 
each  other  a  simple  friendliness  and  an  unthinking 
generosity,  not  to  be  found  among  people  who  are 
compelled  to  jostle  and  elbow  each  other  in  the 
struggle  for  subsistence.  But  I  did  not  find  it  to 
be  so.  Lord  Kew  gives  Jack  Belsize  ever  so  many 
thousand  pounds.  But  the  Lord  Kews  are  scarce 
in  real  life.  Not  only  is  it  hard  to  find  men  who 
give  each  other  fortunes,  but  Lord  Kew's  spirit  is 
not  at  all  the  spirit  of  the  men  I  saw.  The  money 
they  won  from  each  other  in  the  card-rooms  and 
at  the  races,  they  were  very  anxious  to  get  and 
very  willing  to  keep.  Indeed,  men  who  are  on 


ioo  The  British   Upper  Class  [iv. 

stated  allowances,  as  many  of  them  were,  are 
compelled  to  exercise  a  systematic  forecast  in  the 
matter  of  expenses,  which  a  man  who  can  stretch 
his  income  by  a  little  extra  labour  will  scarcely 
take.  As  to  the  gracefully  reckless  kindness,  the 
shop-boy  is  quite  wrong  in  his  notions  upon  this 
point.  So  far  as  I  could  see,  they  did  not  feel 
more  kindly  to  one  another  than  the  brokers  who 
scream  each  other  hoarse  in  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange.  Indeed,  I  believe  that,  as  a  rule,  they 
are  the  most  ready  to  help  others  who  have  most 
ably  helped  themselves. 

Another  of  the  misconceptions  of  the  middle 
classes  which  the  novelists  have  flattered  is  that 
their  superiors  are  so  accustomed  to  superiority 
that  they  have  forgotten  all  about  it.  They  think 
nothing  of  their  distinction,  it  is  said.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  always  thinking  about  it  and 
always  talking  about  it.  They  roll  it  under  their 
tongues  like  a  sweet  morsel.  A  friend  of  mine 
•wrote  to  a  certain  very  great  and  exalted  person, 
asking  whether  we  should  or  should  not  dress  for 
a  political  dinner  at  Richmond.  He  answered 
pithily  :  "  The  snobs  dress  ;  the  gentlemen  don't/' 


iv.]  in  Fiction.  101 

I  may  here  say  that  the  most  elegant  men  in  dress 
and  behaviour  are  not  those  in  whom  pride  of 
lineage  is  strongest.  Your  man  of  stern  family 
pride  rather  despises  any  such  distinction  as  fine 
clothes  and  fine  manners  can  give  him.  When  you 
see  an  individual  with  his  hat  knocked  over  his 
eyes  or  his  collar  awry,  you  may  know  that  he 
secretly  hugs  an  escutcheon  to  his  bosom  with  a 
fervour  and  energy  of  which  no  dandy  is 
capable. 

Thackeray's  charge  against  the  English,  that 
they  are  virtue-proud,  is  certainly  true.  They 
think  themselves  the  best  people  in  the  world, 
and  after  one  notable  exception  has  been  made, 
I  am  inclined  to  agree  with  them.  Of  unkindness 
to  foreigners  upon  their  own  shores  they  are  un- 
justly accused.  They  are,  however,  defiant  in 
their  behaviour  to  strangers,  and  at  this  point 
they  have  been  educated  in  another  misconception. 
They  cherish  the  impression  that  their  reserve  is 
in  some  way  a  scrutiny  of  the  character  of  the 
individual  who  is  a  candidate  for  the  honour  of 
their  acquaintance.  But  this  is  a  mistake.  They 


IO2  The  British  Upper  Class.  [iv. 

hold  back  till  they  are  sure,  not  that  he  is  virtuous, 
but  that  it  will  help  them  to  know  him.  The 
young  Englishman  chooses  his  friends  just  as  the 
young  American  or  the  young  Frenchman  does. 

It  is  the  way  of  the  world  to  regard  success  and 
fortune  as   another  sort  of   character,  and   here 
again  the  English  are  no  exception  to  the  rule. 
Gentle  manners  to  the  poor  and  dependent,  and 
a  conciliatory  bearing  towards  acquaintance,  are 
praised,  if  the  man  who  possesses  them  is  a  person 
of  consequence.      The  English  say,  "He  kno\vs 
who  he  is ; "    "  Nothing  can  be  better  than  he." 
In  such  a  man  rank  seems  to  pass  for  a  kind  of 
virtue.     But  a  seemly  behaviour  is  not  difficult  to 
people  who  have  no  opposition.     You  do  see  men, 
however,   in   England,    in    whom   good    manners 
are  only  another  sort  of  heroism.     Life  is  not  to 
them  a  pleasant  saunter  among  tolerant  equals  and 
obsequious   inferiors.       I  have   known   men   with 
strong,   fierce  hearts    and    the    consciousness    of 
power  and  ability,  who,  unrecognised  and  in  irk- 
some and  difficult  positions,  are  yet  able  to  conduct 
themselves  with  propriety  and  dignity.     There  are 


iv.]  in  Fiction.  103 

rages  which  come,  we  know  not  whence,  and  moods 
in  which  it  is  difficult  to  remember  principles,  yet 
these  men  learn  to  control  them.  They  behave 
with  a  self-respect  which  does  not  verge  upon 
truculence,  and  with  a  complaisance  which  does 
not  approach  servility. 

The  present  tone  of  the  fashionable  novel  is  not 
that  of  the  aristocratic  romance  of  the  early  part  of 
the  century.  It  is  not  even  the  tone  of  Coningsby 
or  Maltravers.  To  the  story-writers  of  "  Cornhill  " 
and  "Fraser"  the  nobleman  is  no  longer  picturesque, 
or  superior,  or  haughty,  or  aquiline.  The  purpose 
of  these  later  writers  is  to  present  him  as  a  good 
deal  more  like  most  people  than  anybody  else. 
The  young  Bohemians  laugh  flippantly  at  the  "  fat 
old  duchess  ; "  the  glib  governesses  pour  much 
scorn  and  contempt  on  "  Lady  Booby's  old, 
rattling,  broken-down  barouche."  The  countess  is 
deaf  and  has  an  ear-trumpet ;  the  marchioness 
is  an  honest  old  termagant,  with  a  voice  and 
temper  like  a  fishwoman's.  But  this  method  of 
treatment  insinuates  a  familiarity,  very  delightful 
to  the  average  British  reader.  It  is  only  another 


IO4  The  British  Upper  Class  in  Fiction,    [iv. 

sort  ot"  admiration.  The  change,  however,  seems 
to  be  in  the  direction  of  truth,  and  the  English  will 
in  time,  no  doubt,  get  back  to  a  healthy  and 
common-sense  treatment  cf  this  subject. 


Presumption. 


THE  East  is  ignorant  of  the  West,  the  West 
is  unduly  sensitive  to  the  unconsciousness  of  the 
East.  It  is  so  in  this  country.  St.  Louis  com- 
pares itself  with  New  York,  and  Kansas  City 
with  St.  Louis.  This  succession  extends  all  the 
way  from  London  to  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
Before  Mr.  Bret  Harte  had  won  his  present  fame, 
I  remember  to  have  met  a  lady  from  the  Pacific 
who  told  me  that  he  was  the  Irving  of  California. 
Now,  Irving  used  to  be  called  the  Goldsmith  of 
America,  and,  I  suppose,  we  shall  shortly  have 
a  Bret  Harte  of  the  Sandwich  Islands.  The  in- 
distinct, hazy  way  in  which  an  eastern  com- 
munity thinks  of  one  to  the  west  of  it,  is 
extremely  tantalising  to  the  latter.  That  such 
a  way  of  thinking  of  Canada  is  common  in  this 


io6  Presumption.  [v. 

country  may  explain  in  part  the  hostility  of  the 
British  Provinces  towards  ourselves.  Until 
recently  most  of  us  thought  of  the  Canadians 
as  a  sort  of  modified  Esquimaux.  In  the  same 
way  the  English  are  ignorant  and  incurious 
about  ourselves.  We,  on  the  contrary,  are  all 
curiosity  and  interest  in  the  English.  An 
American  has  no  sooner  stepped  into  the  streets 
of  Liverpool,  felt  the  exulting  certainty  that  he 
is  really  in  the  old  world,  read  the  signs  of  the 
butchers,  brewers,  and  bakers  to  the  Queen, 
and  wondered  at  the  voracity  of  the  great  per- 
sonages of  the  kingdom,  before  he  begins  to  ask 
himself  in  what  way  these  people  differ  from, 
and  in  what  way  they  resemble  his  countrymen. 
This  is  a  matter  upon  which  the  English  are 
not  at  all  exercised.  That  comfortable  people, 
sitting  contentedly  on  their  firm  anchored  isle, 
are  under  no  pressing  necessity  of  comparing 
themselves  with  anybody.  The  English,  certainly, 
have  this  advantage,  if  it  be  an  advantage.  The 
longitude  of  character  and  custom  is  reckoned 
from  Greenwich. 

The  English  very  justly  charge  that  Americans 


v.j  Presumption,  107 

are  self-assertive.  The  American  at  home  is  not 
an  especially  self-assertive  person,  or  has,  at  any 
rate,  ceased  to  be  so.  But  when  in  Europe  our 
people  have  nothing  to  do,  and  are  away  from 
their  friends  ;  the  people  they  meet,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  in  the  midst  of  their  native  society, 
and  of  their  life-long  employments.  It  is  natural 
that  some  defiant  or  not  altogether  decorous 
advances  should  be  made  by  strangers,  who  have 
any  quantity  of  time  on  their  hands.  In  Eng- 
land, especially,  there  is  some  temptation  to  this, 
from  the  manner  of  many  of  the  people.  Some 
would  say,  I  know,  that  this  is  a  topic  upon 
which  it  were  best  to  keep  silent.  To  expostulate 
with  presumption  is  not  the  proper  way  to  meet 
it.  Presumption  never  means  to  be  reasonable, 
but  only  to  be  successful.  When  you  expostulate 
with  an  arrogant  man  you  acknowledge  the 
success  of  his  arrogance,  which  is  all  he  asks. 
A  friend  of  mine,  an  Englishman,  objected  to 
Mr.  Lowell's  paper,  "  On  a  certain  Condescension 
in  Foreigners,"  that  you  should  never  "let  them 
know  you  see  it."  Now  that  is  well  as  a  rule  for 
behaviour,  but  when  one  is  writing,  one  is  sup- 


io8  Presumption.  [T. 

posed  to  tell  the  truth.  If,  as  a  consequence,  the 
complacency  of  a  man  two  or  three  thousand 
miles  away  may  be  increased  thereby,  why  really 
that  is  no  matter  of  the  author's.  How  foolish 
it  would  have  been  for  Mr.  Lowell  to  have 
assumed  an  attitude  with  which  to  pique  and 
tantalise  an  entire  empire. 

The  mere  fact  that  an  Englishman  is  so  much 
nearer  the  centre  of  the  world  makes  him  seem  to 
himself  a  better  man  than  an  American.  This  is 
especially  manifest  in  third-rate  men,  your  "  gods 
of  war,  lieutenants-colonel  to  the  Earl  of  Mar." 
They  in  some  way  imagine  that  their  geo- 
graphical advantage  is  a  personal  one.  I  once 
sat  at  dinner  near  a  gentleman  of  this  rank,  who 
had  been  in  correspondence  with  a  very  dis- 
tinguished soldier  of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion. 
Somebody  observed  that  the  General  was  a  good 
letter-writer.  "  Oh  yes,"  said  the  Colonel  lan- 
guidly, "  I  kept  the  letters."  Here  was  a  little 
Crimean  Colonel,  who  was  actually  condescending 
to  preserve  the  letters  of  one  of  the  most  il- 
lustrious living  members  of  his  own  profession, 
than  whom  he  plainly  thought  himself  a  greater 


v.]  Presumption.  109 

man.  I  was  at  a  loss  to  explain  it.  I  believe, 
though,  that  the  fact  that  the  General  lived  so 
far  away,  and  had  no  famous  London  or  Paris 
with  which  to  identify  himself,  was  the  uncon- 
scious cause  of  this  feeling. 


English    Court  Festivities. 


AMERICANS  have  an  impression  that  the  English 
think  it  a  considerable  distinction  to  be  presented 
at  Court.  But  the  ceremony  of  presentation  has 
entirely  ceased  to  have  any  social  significance  in 
England.  Any  young  gentleman  who  imagines 
that  the  door  of  English  Society  will  be  thrown 
open  to  him  on  the  publication  of  his  appearance 
at  a  drawing-room  had  better  save  the  expense  of 
a  dress  and  carriage  and  stay  at  home.  If  a  lady 
be  ambitious  of  a  social  success,  the  money  which 
a  robe  will  cost  might  be  expended  to  equal  ad- 
vantage anywhere  else  in  London.  However,  a 
lady's  dress  may  be  worn  again,  and  men  may  hire 
a  court-suit  for  the  day  at  a  very  small  cost.  Your 
tailor,  if  you  get  a  good  deal  of  him,  will  patch  you 


vi.]  English    Court  Festivities.  in 

up  something  tolerable  for  very  little ;  so  that 
sartorial  expenses  are  comparatively  light.  One 
can  get  for  the  afternoon  a  two-horse  brougham, 
with  a  coachman  and  footman,  for  a  sum  less  than 
ten  dollars.  Still,  going  to  Court  costs  something, 
and  its  only  possible  advantage  is  that  the  spectacle 
is  a  fine  and  an  interesting  one.  One  has  therefore 
to  consider  whether  the  sight  is  worth  the  fee. 

A  presentation  at  Court  is  of  quite  as  little 
advantage  to  an  Englishman  as  to  a  foreigner 
coming  to  England.  Almost  anybody  can  be 
presented,  and  of  those  who  are  precluded  from 
presentation,  a  great  many  occupy  higher  positions 
than  many  of  those  who  have  the  privilege  of  going 
to  Court.  Any  graduate  of  a  university,  any  clergy- 
man, any  officer  in  the  army,  is  entitled  to  go.  A 
merchant,  an  attorney,  even  a  barrister,  cannot ; 
and  yet  in  England  a  barrister,  or  for  that  matter, 
a  successful  merchant,  is  apt  to  be  a  person  of 
more  consequence  than  a  curate  or  a  poor  soldier. 
The  Court  has  scarcely  any  social  significance  in 
England.  I  once  asked  a  young  barrister  if  pre- 
sentation would  help  him  in  the  least  in  making 
his  way  in  society.  He  said,  "  Not  a  bit/' 


112  English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

Tn  England  the  position  of  everybody  is  so  well 
fixed  that  people  cannot  well  change  it  by  wishing 
it  to  be  changed.  Thus,  for  a  poor  East  London 
curate  to  go  to  Court  would  simply  make  him 
ridiculous.  The  parsons  in  the  West-End  dj, 
present  themselves,  but  there  is  no  part  of  the 
British  empire  where  clergymen  are  of  such  slight 
consequence  as  in  the  West-End  of  London.  The 
clergymen,  as  they  file  in  along  with  the  gaily- 
accoutred  young  guardsmen,  have  a  meek  and 
gerjlici  air  which  makes  one  feel  that  the)''  hi::! 
better  have  stayed  away.  No  person  who  is  not 
already  in  such  a  position  as  to  need  no  pushing 
could  becomingly  make  his  appearance  at  Court  I 
remember  in  Shropshire  to  have  heard  a  family 
who  went  down  to  London  to  be  presented  made 
the  target  for  the  ridicule  of  the  whole  neigh- 
bourhood. 

Invitations  to  the  Court  festivities  are  given  only 
to  those  persons  presented  in  the  diplomatic  circle. 
It  must  be  understood  that  there  is  at  every  court 
in  Europe  a  select  and  elegant  and  exclusive 
entrance,  by  which  the  diplomatists  come  in. 
Along  with  them  enter  also  the  ministers  of  state 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  113 

and  the  household  officers  of  the  Crown.  The 
general  circle,  as  it  is  called,  includes  everybody 
else.  Another  entrance  and  staircase  are  provided 
for  it,  and  in  that  way  all  of  British  society,  from 
a  duke  to  a  half-pay  captain,  gains  admittance 
to  the  sovereign.  When  one  is  in  the  inside  of 
Buckingham  or  St.  James's  Palace  the  same  dis- 
tinction exists.  The  room  in  which  the  members 
of  the  royal  family  receive  tha  public  is  occupied 
during  the  entire  ceremony  by  the  diplomatic 
circle.  Other  persons,  after  bowing  to  the  Queen, 
pass  into  an  ante-chamber. 

Though  I  say  it  is  of  but  small  social  advantage 
to  an  Englishman  to  be  presented,  yet  undoubtedly 
the  greatest  people  in  the  empire  attend  Court,  and 
are  to  be  seen  at  the  ceremonials  and  festivities  at 
Buckingham  and  St.  James's  Palaces.  At  present 
the  Queen  holds  drawing-rooms  and  levees  at 
Buckingham  Palace,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales  at 
St.  James's  Palace.  The  latter  are  attended  only 
by  gentlemen,  and,  though  not  so  grand  as  the 
Queen's,  are  pleasanter.  Trousers  are  allowed, 
instead  of  the  knee-breeches  and  stockings  which 
must  be  worn  at  all  Court  ceremonials  where  there 

I 


H4  English  Court  Festivities.  [VL 

are  ladies.  At  two  o'clock — for  the  Prince  is  veiy 
punctual — the  doors  of  the  reception-rooms  are 
thrown  open,  and  the  diplomatists  begin  to  file 
in.  First  come  the  ambassadors.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  there  is  a  wide  difference  be- 
tween an  ambassador  and  an  envoy  or  minister 
plenipotentiary.  The  original  difference  was  that 
the  ambassador  was  supposed,  by  a  sort  of  tran- 
substantiation,  to  represent  the  person  of  his 
sovereign.  He  had  a  right  at  any  time  to  demand 
an  audience  with  the  king.  An  envoy  must  see 
the  foreign  secretary.  This,  of  course,  has  ceased 
to  have  any  practical  significance  in  countries  which 
have  constitutions ;  and  no  doubt  a  minister  can 
at  any  time  demand  an  interview  of  the  sovereign. 
It  is  still  true,  however,  that  an  ambassador  is 
accredited  to  the  king,  while  an  envoy  is  ac- 
credited to  the  foreign  secretary.  Practically,  the 
difference  is  that  an  ambassador  represents  a 
bigger  country,  has  better  pay,  lives  in  a  finer 
house,  and  gives  more  parties  and  grander  dinners. 
An  ambassador  has  precedence  of  everybody  in  the 
country  in  which  he  resides,  except  the  royal  family. 
There  are  five  countries  which  send  ambassadors 


vi.]  English   Coiirt  Festivities.  115 

to  England — Russia,  France,  Germany,  Austria, 
and  Turkey.  These  ambassadors  enter  the  re- 
ception-room at  the  Prince's  levee  in  the  order  of 
seniority  of  residence. 

Behind  each  ambassador  come  the  secretaries 
of  the  embassy.  After  the  ambassadors  come  the 
ministers.  The  whole  diplomatic  corps  moves  from 
an  ante-room  into  an  apartment  in  which  the  Prince 
of  Wales  awaits  them.  The  Prince  and  several  of 
his  brothers  and  cousins  stand  up  in  a  row.  Next 
to  the  Prince,  on  his  right,  stands  Viscount  Sidney, 
the  lord  chamberlain,  who  calls  off  each  detach- 
ment as  it  approaches — "the  Austrian  ambassa- 
dor," "  the  Spanish  minister,"  "  the  United  States 
minister,"  &c.  The  Prince  shakes  hands  with  the 
head  of  the  embassy  or  mission,  and  bows  to 
the  secretaries.  When  the  diplomatists,  cabinet 
ministers,  and  household  officers  have  all  made 
their  bow,  it  is  the  turn  of  British  society.  The 
diplomatic  circle,  and  such  as  have  the  entree  to  it, 
remain  in  the  room :  the  Englishmen  pass  out. 
The  Lord  Chamberlain  in  a  loud  voice  calls  off 
the  name  of  each  person  as  he  appears,  so  that 
each  comer  is,  as  it  were,  labelled  and  ticketed. 


n6  English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

One  may  often  guess  the  rank  or  importance  of 
the  courtier  by  the  manner  of  his  reception.  If  he 
shakes  hands  with  the  Prince,  you  may  know  he  is 
somebody — if  he  shakes  hands  with  all  five  or  six 
of  the  princes,  you  may  know  he  is  a  very  great 
person.  But  if  he  gives  the  princes  a  wide  berth, 
bows  hastily  and  glances  furtively  at  them,  and 
runs  by  skittishly,  then  you  may  know  that  he  is 
some  half-pay  colonel  or  insignificant  civil  servant. 
Something,  too,  may  be  inferred  from  the  length 
of  time  the  Lord  Chamberlain  takes  to  decipher 
the  name  of  the  comer  on  the  slip  of  paper  which 
is  handed  him.  If  he  scans  it  long  and  hard,  and 
holds  it  a  good  way  from  him,  and  says,  "  Major 
Te — e — e — bosh — bow,"  then  in  a  loud  voice, 
"  Major  Tebow,"  you  will  be  safe  in  thinking 
that  Major  Tebow  is  not  one  of  the  greatest  of 
warriors  or  largest  of  landed  proprietors. 

The  ceremony  lasts  an  hour  and  a  half  or  two 
hours,  and  during  the  whole  of  it  the  talk  and 
hand-shaking  among  the  diplomatists  go  on  very 
pleasantly.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  esprit  de  corps 
p.mong  them,  and  perfect  equality.  Attaches, 
secretaries,  and  ministers  walk  about  through  the 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  117 

room  and  exchange  greetings.  The  ambassadors 
are  rather  statelier :  these  do  not  mix  themselves 
with  the  crowd  of  diplomatists,  but  stand  up  apart, 
all  five  in  a  row,  leaning  against  the  wall. 

At  all  other  Court  entertainments  ladies  are 
present.  Of  course  there  are  a  great  many  very 
pretty  ones,  and  their  toilets  are  brilliant.  The 
Queen's  levees  are  very  much  longer  than  those  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales.  Then,  at  all  ceremonials 
where  there  are  ladies,  men  are  compelled  to  wear, 
as  I  have  said,  silk  stockings  and  knee-breeches, 
shoes,  and  buckles.  One  can  support  this  costume 
in  tolerable  comfort  in  a  warm  room,  but  in  getting 
from  the  carriage  to  the  door  it  is  often  like 
walking  knee-deep  in  a  tub  of  cold  water.  A 
cold  hall  or  a  draught  from  an  open  door  will  give 
very  unpleasant  sensations.  In  many  of  the  large 
rooms  of  the  palaces  huge  fireplaces,  with  great 
logs  of  wood,  roar  behind  tall  brass  fenders.  Once 
in  front  of  one  of  these,  the  courtier  who  isn't  a 
Scotchman  feels  as  if  he  would  never  care  to  go 
away.  Fortunately,  most  of  these  ceremonials  are 
in  summer,  but  the  first  of  them  come  in  February, 
and  London  is  often  cool  well  up  into  June. 


n8  English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

The  ceremony  of  a  presentation  to  the  Queen 
is  quite  the  same  as  that  at  a  Prince  of 
Wales's  levee.  The  class  of  royal  ladies  stand 
up  in  a  rigid  row.  On  the  Queen's  right  is  the 
Lord  Chamberlain,  who  reads  off  the  names.  Next 
to  the  Queen,  on  her  left,  is  the  Princess  of  Wales, 
then  the  Queen's  daughters  and  the  Princess 
Mary  of  Cambridge.  Next  to  them  stand  the 
princes,  and  the  whole  is  a  phalanx  which 
stretches  entirely  across  the  room.  Behind  this 
line,  drawn  up  in  battle  array,  stand  three  or 
four  ranks  of  Court  ladies. 

The  act  of  presentation  is  very  easy  and 
simple.  Formerly — indeed,  until  within  a  few 
years — it  must  have  been  a  very  perilous  and 
important  feat.  The  courtier  (the  term  is  used 
inaccurately,  there  being  no  noun  to  describe  a 
person  who  goes  to  Court  for  a  single  time)  was 
compelled  to  walk  up  a  long  room,  and  to  back, 
bowing,  out  of  the  Queen's  presence.  For  ladies 
who  had  trains  to  manage  the  ordeal  must  have 
been  a  trying  one.  Now  it  has  been  made  quite 
easy.  There  is  but  one  point  in  which  a  pre- 
sentation to  the  Queen  differs  from  that  already 


VL]  English  Court  Festivities.  119 

described  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  levee.  You 
may  turn  your  back  to  the  Prince,  but  after 
bowing  to  the  Queen  you  step  off  into  the  crowd, 
still  facing  her.  There  (if  you  have  had  the  good 
luck  to  be  presented  in  the  diplomatic  circle) 
you  may  stand  and  watch  a  most  interesting 
pageant.  To  the  young  princes,  perhaps,  it  is 
not  very  amusing ;  but  there  is  plenty  in  it  to 
occupy  and  interest  the  man  who  sees  it  for  the 
first  or  second  time.  You  do  not  have  to  ask 
"Who  is  this?"  and  "Who  is  that?"  The  Lord 
Chamberlain  announces  each  person  as  he  or 
she  appears.  You  hear  the  most  heroic  and 
romantic  names  in  English  history  as  some  boy 
or  old  woman  appears  to  represent  them.  One 
sees  a  number  of  beautiful  persons.  The  young 
slips  of  girls  who  come  to  be  presented  for  the 
first  time,  frightened  and  pale  or  flushed,  one 
admires  and  feels  a  sense  of  loyalty  to. 

The  name  of  each  person  is  called  out  loudly 
by  the  Lord  Chamberlain.  The  ladies  bow  very 
low,  and  those  to  whom  the  Queen  gives  her 
hand  to  kiss  nearly  or  quite  touch  their  knee  to 
the  carpet.  No  act  of  homage  to  the  Queen 


I2O          English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

ever  seems  exaggerated,  her  behaviour  being  so 
modest  and  the  sympathy  with  her  so  wide  and 
sincere ;  but  ladies  very  nearly  kneel  in  shaking 
hands  with  any  member  of  the  royal  family,  not 
only  at  Court,  but  elsewhere.  It  is  not  so  strange- 
looking,  the  kneeling  to  a  royal  lady,  but  to  see 
a  stately  mother  or  some  soft  maiden  rendering 
such  an  act  of  homage  to  a  young  gentleman 
impresses  one  unpleasantly.  The  courtesy  of  a 
lady  to  a  prince  or  princess  is  something  between 
kneeling  and  that  queer  genuflection  one  meets 
in  the  English  agricultural  districts  :  the  props 
of  the  boys  and  girls  seem  momentarily  to  be 
knocked  away,  and  they  suddenly  catch  them- 
selves in  descending.  It  astonished  me,  I  re- 
member, at  a  party,  to  see  one  patrician  young 
woman  shake  hands  with  a  not  very  imposing 
young  prince,  and  bend  her  regal  knees  into  this 
curious  and  sudden  little  cramp.  I  saw  her,  this 
adventurous  maid,  some  days  afterward  in  a 
hansom  cab,  directing  with  her  imperious  parasol 
the  cabby  to  this  and  that  shop. 

This    odd    jumble    of  the   new    and    the    old 
struck   me   again   and   again    wherever  I   turned. 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  121 

The  mysterious  scarlet  coaches  rolled  along 
Piccadilly  side  by  side  with  the  smart  waggons 
of  the  Cheshire  Cheese  and  Butter  Company. 
To  the  traveller  who  idles  away  a  balmy  morn- 
ing in  Green  Park,  can  he  resist  for  a  moment 
the  blue  hues  of  the  Abbey  towers,  and  the  warm 
shining  greensward,  this  impression  is  often 
present.  The  goblins  wont  to  disport  themselves 
in  the  mediaeval  moonshine  have  been  suddenly 
overtaken  by  a  flood  of  commonplace  daylight. 
There  is  the  veritable  St.  James's  Palace.  But 
no  Charles  drives  forth  from  its  open  portal  as 
in  the  gay  pictures  on  the  curtains  of  the  theatres. 
The  word  belated  expresses  the  general  impression 
which  the  monarchical  and  aristocratic  fabric  of 
English  society  makes  upon  the  observer.  It  is 
like  the  banquet-hall  the  morning  after  the  ban- 
quet ;  the  goblets  are  overturned,  the  dishes  half- 
emptied,  and  the  strong  sunlight  pours  in  upon 
the  silent  chamber,  long  deserted  by  the  revellers. 
The  levees  and  the  drawing-rooms  may  be 
called  the  Court  ceremonials.  There  are,  besides, 
the  Court  festivities,  or  the  balls  and  concerts  at 
Buckingham  Palace.  There  are  four  or  five  of 


122  English  Court  Festivities.  [VL 

these    given    in    a    season — two    balls    and    two 
concerts.     The  balls  are  the  larger  and  less  select, 
but  much  the  more  amusing.     The  ball-room  of 
the  palace  is  a  large  rectangular  apartment.     At 
one  end  is  the  orchestra — at  the  other  a  raised 
dais  on  which  the  "  royalties  "  sit.     On  each  side, 
running  the  length  of  the  hall,  are  three  tiers  of 
benches,  which  are  for  ladies  and  such  gentlemen 
as  can  get  a  seat.     The  tiers  on  the  left  of  the 
dais  are   for  diplomatists.      English   society   has 
the  tiers  upon  the  other  side.     By  ten  the  ball- 
room   is    usually  filled   with  people  waiting  for 
the  appearance  of  the  royalties.     The  band  strikes 
up,   and   the   line   of  princes  and    princesses  ad- 
vances down  the  long  hall   leading   to   the   ball- 
room.      The    Queen    and    Prince    Albert     used 
formerly  to  preside  at  these  balls.     The   Queen 
does  not  come  now :   the  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Wales  take  her  place. 

First  enters  a  line  of  gentlemen  bearing  long 
sticks.  Behind  them  come  the  princesses,  bowing 
on  each  hand.  The  Princess  of  Wales  advances 
first,  with  a  naive,  faltering,  hesitating  step,  a 
strange  and  quite  delicious  blending  of  timidity 


vi.]  English  Coiirt  Festivities.  123 

and  child-like  confidence  in  her  manner.  Then 
come,  walking  by  twos,  some  daughters  of  the 
Queen.  A  German  duchess  or  two  follow  her.  The 
courtesies  of  these  German  princesses  are  indeed 
quite  wonderful.  After  entering  the  hall  one  of 
them  will  espy  (such,  I  suppose,  is  the  fiction) 
some  persons  to  whom  she  wishes  to  bow,  and 
she  then  proceeds  to  execute  a  performance  of 
some  minutes'  duration.  Before  courtesying,  she 
stops  and  looks  at  the  persons  to  be  saluted 
as  a  frightened  horse  examines  intently  the 
object  which  alarms  him  :  she  then  sinks  slowly 
backwards  almost  to  the  ground,  and  recovers 
herself  with  the  same  slowness.  It  would  seem 
that  such  a  genuflection  must  be,  of  necessity, 
ridiculous.  But  it  is  not  so  in  the  least :  it  is 
quite  successful,  and  rather  pleasing.  After  the 
ladies  come  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  his  suite. 
The  royalties  then  all  go  upon  the  stage,  and 
after  music  the  ball  begins. 

There  are  two  sets  of  dancers.  The  princes 
and  princesses  open  the  ball  with  the  diplomatists 
and  some  of  the  highest  nobility  on  the  space 
just  in  front  of  the  dais.  The  rest  of  the  hall 


124  English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

is  occupied  by  the  other  dancers,  who  later  in 
the  evening  find  their  way  into  the  diplomatic 
set.  The  dancing  in  the  quadrilles  and  Lancers 
is  of  a  rather  stately  and  ceremonious  sort.  In 
waltz  or  galop  the  English  mostly  dance  the 
same  step,  the  deux  temps,  and  the  aim  of  the 
dancing  couple  is  to  go  as  much  like  a  spinning- 
top  as  possible.  They  make  occasional  efforts 
to  introduce  puzzling  novelties  like  the  trois  temps, 
the  Boston  dip,  etc.,  but,  I  am  glad  to  say,  with- 
out any  success.  The  result  is,  that  once  having 
learned  to  dance  in  England,  you  are  safe. 

The  great  hall  during  the  waltz  is  a  brilliant 
spectacle.  There  are  many  beautiful  women,  the 
toilets  are  dazzling,  and  all  the  men  are  "  flaming 
in  purple  and  gold."  There  is  every  variety  of 
magnificent  dress.  Officers  of  a  Russian  body- 
guard are  gold  from  head  to  foot.  Hungarians 
wear  purple  and  fur-trimmed  robes  of  dark 
crimson  of  the  utmost  splendour.  The  young 
men  of  the  Guards'  Club  in  gold  and  scarlet 
coats,  and  in  spurred  boots  which  reach  above 
their  knees,  clank  through  the  halls.  Scotch 
lords  sit  about,  and  exhibit  legs  of  which  they 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  125 

are  justly  proud.  Here,  with  swinging  gait, 
wanders  the  Queen's  piper,  a  sort  of  poet- 
laureate  of  the  bagpipes,  arrayed  in  plaid,  and 
carrying  upon  his  arm  the  soft,  enchanting 
instrument  to  the  music  of  which,  no  doubt,  the 
Queen  herself  dances.  The  music  of  the  orchestra 
is  perfect,  and  he  must  be  a  dull  man  who  does 
not  feel  the  festivity,  the  buoyancy,  and  the  elation 
of  the  scene. 

The  dress  which  our  diplomatic  representatives 
are  now  compelled  to  wear  at  the  Court  ceremonies 
and  festivities  needs  a  word  of  mention.  Our 
people  in  America  are  somewhat  conceited,  some- 
what prone  to  be  confident,  upon  questions  of  which 
they  know  very  little.  Congress,  at  a  distance 
of  some  thousands  of  miles -from  courts,  thought 
itself  competent  to  decide  what  sort  of  Court  dress 
an  American  diplomatist  should  wear.  An  able, 
though  crotchety  man,  brought  forward  a  measure, 
and,  once  proposed,  it  was  certain  to  go  through, 
because  to  oppose  its  passage  would  have  been  to 
be  aristocratic  and  un-American.  Mr.  Sumner's 
bill  required  Americans  to  go  in  the  "  ordinary 
dress  of  an  American  citizen."  There  was  no 


126  English  Court  Festivities.  [VL 

attempt  to  indicate  what  that  should  be.  Up  to 
that  time  our  diplomatists  had  worn  the  uniform 
used  by  the  non-military  diplomatists  of  other 
countries.  This  consists  of  a  blue-coat  with  more 
or  less  gold  upon  it,  white  breeches,  silk  stockings, 
sword,  and  chapeau. 

An  attempt  or  two  had  been  made  before 
by  the  State  Department  to  interfere  with  the 
trappings  of  its  servants  abroad.  Marcy  issued  a 
circular  requesting  American  diplomatists  to  go 
to  Court  without  uniform.  This  afforded  James 
Buchanan  an  opportunity  of  making  one  of  the 
best  speeches  attributed  to  him.  The  circular  of 
Mr.  Marcy  threw  consternation  into  the  breasts  of 
certain  ancient  functionaries  of  the  European 
courts,  for  shortly  after  its  appearance  the  Lord 
High  Chamberlain  in  waiting,  or  some  other 
member  of  the  Queen's  household,  called  upon 
Mr.  Buchanan,  who  was  then  the  United  States 
minister  in  London,  and  said  that  a  certain  very 
distinguished  person  had  heard  of  the  recent  wish 
which  the  American  government  had  expressed 
with  regard  to  the  costume  of  its  agents,  and  that 
while  she  would  be  happy  to  see  Mr.  Buchanan  in 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  127 

any  dress  in  which  he  might  choose  to  present 
himself,  she  yet  hoped  he  would  so  far  consult 
her  wishes  as  to  consent  to  carry  a  sword.  "  Tell 
that  very  distinguished  personage,"  said  Mr. 
Buchanan,  "  that  not  only  will  I  wear  a  sword,  as 
she  requests,  but,  should  occasion  require  it,  will 
hold  myself  ready  to  draw  it  in  her  defence."  This 
strikes  me  as  in  just  that  tone  of  respectful  exagge- 
ration and  playful  acquiescence  which  a  gentleman 
in  this  country  may  very  becomingly  take  toward 
the  whole  question.  Neither  Mr.  Buchanan  nor 
anyone  else,  I  believe,  heeded  the  request  of  the 
Department,  and  Mr.  Marcy  himself,  it  is  said, 
subsequently  repudiated  it 

But  what  was  only  a  request  of  the  State 
Department  in  Mr.  Marcy's  time  is  now  a  law. 
I  had  good  opportunities  to  know  how  very  un- 
comfortable the  poor  American  diplomatist  is 
made  by  this  piece  of  legislation.  Its  object  was, 
of  course,  to  give  him  a  veiy  unpretending  and 
subdued  appearance.  The  result  is,  that  with  the 
exception  of  Bengalese  nabobs,  the  son  of  the 
Mikado  of  Japan,  and  the  Khan  of  Khiva,  the 
American  legations  are  the  most  noticeable  people 


128          English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

at  any  Court  ceremony  or  festivity  in  Europe. 
When  everybody  else  is  flaming  in  purple  and 
gold  the  ordinary  diplomatic  uniform  is  exceed- 
ingly simple  and  modest ;  but  the  Yankee  diplo- 
mates  are  the  most  scrutinised  and  conspicuous 
persons  to  be  seen. 

The  dress  in  which  our  diplomates  attend  Court 
at  present  is  a  plain  dress-coat  and  vest,  with 
knee-breeches,  black  silk  stockings,  shoes,  &c. 
It  is  difficult  to  see  in  what  sense  this  is  the 
"ordinary  dress  of  an  American  citizen."  The 
dress  is  not  so  ugly  as  it  would  seem  to  be ; 
indeed,  with  the  help  of  a  white  vest  and  liberal 
watch-chain,  it  might  be  made  quite  becoming 
were  it  not  so  excessively  conspicuous.  An 
English  cabinet  minister  at  a  party  given  in  his 
own  house  usually  wears  it,  and  all  persons  invited 
to  the  Empress  Eugenie's  private  parties  came  got 
up  in  that  manner.  But  in  London  it  was  not  till 
recently  that  American  diplomatists  were  allowed 
to  go  to  Court  even  thus  attired.  Everywhere  else 
in  Europe  the  United  States  legations  were  ad- 
mitted in  evening  dress,  the  concession  of  knee- 
breeches  not  having  been  required.  But  at 


vi.]  English  Court  Festivities.  129 

Buckingham  Palace  no  Americans  were  admitted 
without  the  proper  garments.  The  consequence 
was,  that  our  legation  was  compelled  to  stay  at 
home.  This  state  of  things  continued  until 
Reverdy  Johnson  came  out,  who  arranged  what 
was  called  "  the  Breeches  Protocol."  Owing  to 
the  unreasonable  state  of  the  public  mind  during 
his  term  of  office,  this  was  the  only  measure 
which  that  good  and  able  man  succeeded  in 
accomplishing.  The  compromise  which  Mr. 
Johnson's  good-humour  and  the  friendly  impulse 
of  the  British  public  toward  us  at  that  time  wrung 
from  the  chamberlains  and  gold-sticks  of  St. 
James's  (for  you  may  say  what  you  will,  public 
opinion  is  irresistible),  was  to  allow  the  minister 
and  the  two  secretaries  of  legation  to  appear  in 
the  breeches  above  described.  Americans  who  are 
presented  at  Court,  and  who  get  invitations  to  the 
festivities,  are  all  required  to  wear  a  Court  dress. 
Of  what  good  compelling  the  poor  diplomatists  to 
make  scarecrows  of  themselves  may  be  I  do  not 
know.  Mr.  Summer's  proposition  was  just  one  of 
those  absurdities  to  which  men  are  liable  who  have 
considerable  conscience  and  no  sense  of  humour. 

K 


130  English  Court  Festivities.  [vi. 

Senators  and  members  of  Congress  fell  in  with  it 
because  they  feared  to  be  un-American,  and  be- 
cause it  is  not  their  wont  to  be  very  dignified  or 
(in  matters  of  this  sort)  very  scrupulous. 


English    Tradition  and  the 
English  Future. 


THE  admiration  of  the  novelists  of  thirty  years 
ago  for  the  British  upper  class  was  a  symptom 
of  the  admiration  by  the  English  of  that  period 
of  everything  pertaining  to  themselves.  Each 
Englishman  felt  (read,  for  instance,  Ford's  "  Hand- 
book of  Spain")  as  if  he  himself  had  discovered 
gravitation,  written  "  Childe  Harold,"  conquered 
Waterloo  and  Trafalgar,  and  perished  upon  the 
Plains  of  Abraham.  The  aristocracy  was  at  the 
top  of  British  society,  and  of  course  great.  So 
that  it  is  difficult,  in  reading  tne  chronicles  of 
the  manners  of  that  day,  to  distinguish  oetween 
what  is  laudation  of  a  class,  and  what  is  laudation 
of  the  Empire  and  the  period.  The  novelists 
can  find  no  words  in  which  to  insinuate  the  im- 


132  English  Tradition  [VH. 

mense  immaturity  of  anybody  who  would  with- 
hold his  applause.  Zoroaster  and  Confucius 
would  smile  with  wise  tolerance  upon  the  cynic 
and  the  radical,  and  would  cheerfully  assist 
society  by  showing  themselves  at  the  assemblies. 
Zanoni,  with  the  personal  acquaintance  of  every 
interesting  individual  of  the  race  from  Adam 
down,  Bulwer  would  have  thought  nothing  of 
until  he  had  entered  him  at  the  clubs,  introduced 
him  to  the  party  chiefs,  and  given  him  enough 
of  the  current  coin  of  the  realm  to  astonish  the 
lackeys.  That  writer  describes  with  excess  of 
definition  the  Parliamentary  leaders.  It  is  neces- 
sary that  we  should  be  able  to  recognise  to  a 
shade  these  prime  figures  in  the  most  important 
arena  of  the  world.  We  are  not  permitted  to 
forget  the  majesty  of  these  persons  even  when 
they  are  satirised.  Readers  of  "The  Caxtons"  will 
remember  a  letter  on  colonisation,  from  the 
statesman  Trevanion  to  the  young  Pisistratus.  It 

runs  :    "  Dear   Pisistratus  :  W is  up  !    we  are 

in  for  it  for  two  mortal  hours."  This  letter  is 
dated  from  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the 
Library  of  the  House  of  Commons !  Yet  notice 


vii.]  and  the  English  Future.  133 

the  very  light  way  in  which  the  letter  leads   off. 

"W is   up,"  said   in   three  words,  and   such 

short  and  indifferent  ones,  too.  How  fascinating 
is  the  disrespectful  allusion  in  the  next  clause. 

"  We  are  in  it  for  two  mortal  hours."     W is 

tiresome,  no  doubt,  but  can  you  help  admiring 
the  point  of  view  of  that  man  who  can  make 
sport  of  him  ?  The  reader  must  remember  the 
impression  made  upon  him  in  youth  by  a  descrip- 
tion of  that  most  important  event,  a  change  of 
government.  There  is  a  most  impressive  one  in 
Mr.  Disraeli's  "Coningsby."  At  three  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  while  the  boys  in  the  waiting-room 
of  a  club  in  Pall  Mall  are  asleep,  a  gentleman 
(I  forget  his  name,  but  we  will  call  him  Mr. 
Gervase  Hastyngs)  rushes  in  breathless  and  an- 
nounces that  Lord  Derby  has  been  to  see  the 
Queen,  and  that  Peel  has  just  been  sent  for  to 
form  a  government.  How  striking  is  the  con- 
trast between  the  commonplace  accidents  of  the 
scene  and  the  tremendous  importance  of  the 
moment.  One  would  expect  a  portent  in  the 
sky  to  announce  such  an  event.  There  is  a  new 
government,  and  it  is  only  the  breathless  Gervase 


134  English  Tradition  [vn. 

Hastyngs  and  the  hall-boy  in  buttons  who  have 
heard  of  it.  Ah,  sleepy  Islington,  drowsy  Clerken- 
well,  you  honest  tradesfolk  soundly  snoring  in 
Clapham,  Fulham,  Brixton,  Hampstead,  and  High- 
bury, little  you  know  what  goes  on  among  your 
betters  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

But  very  little  of  this  arrogance  of  victory 
and  supremacy  remains  in  England.  The  tone 
at  present  is  rather  one  of  diffidence  and  dis- 
content. There  are  those  who  profess  to  believe 
that  England  has  lost  her  ancient  courage  and 
her  warlike  spirit.  Now,  a  nation  which  has  the 
virtues  and  the  advantages  of  peace  cannot  expect 
to  have  also  the  virtues  of  war,  except  in  a 
dormant  and  potential  way.  To  hear  the  talk 
of  some  persons,  you  would  think  that  war  is 
the  state  of  society  for  which  peace  is  the  pre- 
paration, instead  •  of  peace  being  the  state  of 
society  for  which  war  is  the  preparation.  Courage 
is  a  means,  and  not  an  end,  and  it  is  shown  in 
fighting  for  the  things  we  want.  Englishmen  of 
the  present  time  are  not  willing  to  make  war  for 
what  they  do  not  very  much  desire.  But  ought 
they  not  to  wish  to  keep  their  country  in  its 


vii.]  and  the  English  Future.  135 

position  at  the  head  of  the  world,  which  it  held 
fifty  years  ago  ?  Any  such  obstinate  deter- 
mination would  surely  show  a  great  lack  of 
political  intelligence.  The  times  change  and  we 
change.  The  new  conditions  of  the  Empires  of 
Russia  and  Germany  and  the  silent  influence 
exerted  by  this  country  have  altered  the  face  of 
the  world.  England  does  not  greatly  desire  to 
hold  her  old  place,  because  she  feels  that  she 
cannot  hold  it,  and  it  is  only  lunatics  who  refuse 
to  cut  their  coat  according  to  their  cloth.  But 
as  to  the  charge  of  a  want  of  patriotic  feeling 
and  the  spirit  which  takes  men  well  into  battle, 
there  can-  be  no  truth  in  it,  as  any  man  among 
the  millions  who  heard  the  fife  and  drum  play 
before  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley^s  returning  legions 
could  have  known  from  the  beating  of  his  own 
heart.  The  tumult  of  the  crowd  and  the  sight 
of  the  pathetic  ranks  of  real  warriors  reveals  in 
the  breast  of  the  plainest  citizen  possibilities  of 
which  at  average  moments  he  does  not  dream. 

The  English  now  propose  to  lead  the  world  in  a 
new  way.  When  we  go  to  heaven,  we  are  told,  we 
shall  not  have  fine  wines  and  costly  apparel,  but 


136  English  Tradition  [vn. 

we  shall  not  miss  them,  because  we  shall  have 
ceased  to  cherish  these  carnal  desires.  The 
English  think — at  least  that  portion  of  them  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  represents — that  while  it  is  true  that 
they  are  not  hereafter  to  lead  the  world  after  their 
old  fashion,  yet  that  fact  should  not  make  them 
unhappy,  for  in  the  new  order  of  things  the  nations 
will  set  little  store  by  mere  physical  victory.  The 
first  duties  of  a  state  will  be  the  education  of  its 
citizens  and  the  advancement  of  mankind.  The 
greatest  state  shall  lead  the  world,  not  in  selfish- 
ness, but  in  unselfishness.  That  state  shall  be 
greatest  which  is  supreme  in  ideas  and  in  the 
useful  arts.  Of  course,  there  can  be  no  disputing 
the  truth  of  this  principle.  If  the  English  have  a 
more  highly  educated  population  than  we,  purer 
domestic  life,  a  more  dignified  press,  a  more 
honourable  administration  of  government  and  of 
justice,  they  are  better  than  we,  though  we  crowd 
the  Continent  with  our  money-getting  millions. 
Gladstone's  view  is,  undoubtedly,  the  highest,  and, 
undoubtedly,  the  best,  provided  always  that  the 
state  is  strong  enough  to  pursue  its  high  purposes 
in  security. 


VIL]  and  the  English  Fiitiire.  137 

But  it  seems  to  me  not  so  improbable  that  the 
dream  of  the  English  Liberals  may  have  an  easy 
realisation.  I  know  that  an  American  editor  in 
his  third  or  fourth  letter  home  is  not  unlikely  to 
say  something  of  the  palpable  decadence  of  the 
English  power.  The  observation  is  often  made 
regretfully,  as  if  the  discovery  caused  him  a  pang. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  the  state  of  mind 
in  which  these  regretful  paragraphs  are  written. 
His  landlady  is  the  only  person  in  the  great  wil- 
derness who  knows  him.  Nobody  marks  him. 
Not  a  soul  in  the  restaurant  or  the  omnibus 
recognises  him.  The  main  street  of  the  city  in 
which  his  own  paper — the  Chronicle  and  Evening 
Advertiser — is  published  has  no  place  in  the  imagi- 
nations of  the  people  he  meets.  He  is  naturally 
interested  in  the  points  of  difference  between  the 
newspapers  there  and  at  home.  But  there  is  in 
the  broad,  decorous  columns  of  the  Times,  as  they 
lie  open  before  him  in  the  coffee-room  of  his  inn, 
an  obvious  and  depressing  ignorance  of  the 
Chronicle  and  Evening  Advertiser.  He  believes 
in  his  heart  that  the  managers  of  the  Times  never 
heard  of  his  paper.  If  the  editor  of  the  Chronicle 


138  English  Tradition  [vn. 

and  Evening  Advertiser  is  at  all  a  splenetic  person, 
he  will  shortly  have  occasion,  with  mournful  im- 
partiality, to  suggest  the  "  political  decline,"  the 
"  germ  of  social  disorder,"  &c.  &c. 

As  for  the  "germ  of  social  disorder,"  if  the 
labour  question  is  to  be  the  end  of  English  society, 
it  will  be  likely  to  be  the  end  of  us  also.  I  am  not 
sure  that  there  is  to  be  a  "  political  decadence."  I 
think  that  England  will  find  physical  security  while 
pursuing  the  course  which  her  Liberal  statesmen 
have  marked  out  for  her  in  the  moral  support  of 
the  English  race  the  world  over.  The  idea  of  race 
is  good  only  up  to  a  certain  point.  Because  a 
certain  number  of  people  in  many  parts  of  the 
earth  speak  the  same  tongue  (some  of  them  very 
detestably),  it  would  be  very  unreasonable  that 
they  should  join  hands  against  everybody  whose 
patois  is  different.  But  so  long  as  England  con- 
ducts herself  with  reason,  and  with  that  obvious 
ambition  to  act  justly  which  now  marks  her,  she 
will  be  sure  of  the  sympathy  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  She  will  not  need  support,  moral  or  physical, 
if  she  withdraws  within  herself  and  limits  her  pur- 
poses by  the  "  streak  of  silver  sea  "  which  separates 


VIL]  and  the  English  Future.  139 

her  from  her  enemies.  But  should  she  feel  it  her 
duty  to  continue  her  beneficent  endeavours  for  the 
civilisation  of  her  remote  dependencies,  she  will 
find  that  the  Pan-Anglican  sentiment  may  do  her 
good  service.  The  silent  feeling  of  the  race,  even 
if  understood  to  be  but  tepidly  friendly,  will  go  far 
to  preserve  her  from  extremities.  England  will  be 
strong  in  proportion  as  she  has  the  moral  support 
of  the  race.  As  I  suppose  it  to  be  a  mere  matter 
of  arithmetic  that  for  the  next  few  hundred  years 
this  country  will  contain  the  physical  mass  of  the 
race,  I  may  go  farther  and  say  that  England  will 
be  strong  in  proportion  as  she  has  the  moral 
support  of  this  country.  Secure  in  that  support, 
there  is  no  reason  why,  with  her  universities  and 
her  highly  educated  upper  class,  she  should  not 
continue  to  teach  and  lead  us  as  she  certainly  does 
teach  us  and  lead  us  at  present  in  almost  all  the 
departments  of  thought  and  civilisation.  Why 
should  not  London  be  the  capital  of  the  race  ? 

In  such  a  state  of  things  the  diminutive  size  of 
England  will  be  a  part  of  her  good  fortune.  Gold 
is  precious  because  there  is  so  little  of  it.  When 
the  world  is  full  of  people  who  look  back  to  her  as 


1 40    English  Tradition  and  the  Future,    [vn. 

the  home  of  their  tradition,  she  will  be  happy  in 
that  her  soil  will  not  be  capable  of  dilution.  There 
are  leagues  upon  leagues  in  America  and  Australia, 
but  it  may  be  said  with  pride  and  affection  that 
there  are  only  a  few  meadows  and  a  stream  or  two 
in  England.  I  suggest  this  point  for  the  considera- 
tion of  any  American  who  is  to  speak  at  a  London 
public  dinner.  Let  the  orator  assure  his  hearers 
that  the  race  in  India,  in  Africa,  in  Australia,  in 
America — wherever  the  Anglo-Saxon  pursues  his 
heaven-given  prerogative  to  subdue  nature  and 
society — will  constitute  a  mighty  moral  empire, 
of  which  this  little  island  will  be  the  sacred  and 
inviolable  home,  and  he  will  be  certain  to  sit  down 
amid  applause. 


Childhood  and  English 

Tradition. 


A  POINT  I  have  not  seen  made  much  of  is  the 
hold  which  English  tradition  and  fable  and 
fiction  get  upon  the  mind  of  infancy  in  this 
country.  When  young  eyes  first  open  with 
fresh  wonder  upon  the  world,  the  scenes  of 
English  life  come  in  upon  us  from  a  hundred 
sources.  Perhaps  these  impressions  are  not  so 
strong  now  as  in  the  days  before  the  war.  I  see 
that  the  school  readers  now  have  pictures  of  the 
Pacific  Railroad  with  the  buffalo  scampering 
from  the  coming  engine.  But  in  my  day  the 
pictures  in  the  reading-books  were  all  English  ; 
the  pictures  were  English,  even  if  the  books  were 
of  American  composition.  The  lessons  were 
mainly  English,  and  had  to  do  with  English 


142  Childhood  [vm. 

things.  It  was  before  the  paling  of  an  English 
cottage  that  we  saw  the  bent  old  man,  whose 
age  we  were  told  to  revere  and  pity.  It  was 
from  an  English  casement  that  the  little  girl  let 
the  captive  robin  out  of  the  cage.  I  was  ten 
before  I  knew  that  the  lark  was  not  an  American 
bird,  and,  on  being  told  that  I  should  have  a  day 
in  the  country,  remember  promising  myself  that 
I  should  hear  the  bird  about  which  so  much  was 
said  in  McGuffey's  "  Second  Reader."  The  good 
boy  in  that  little  volume  was  always  rewarded 
with  a  tart  Now,  I  doubt  if  anybody  living  in 
Maryland,  Virginia,  or  thereabouts,  had  ever 
eaten  a  tart,  or  had  seen  one  to  know  it  by  that 
name.  I  am  sure  I  never  had.  But,  for  that 
matter,  neither  had  a  poet  of  the  last  century 
ever  seen  an  Amaryllis  or  a  Chloe,  or  heard  a 
shepherd  piping  in  the  shade.  I  must  have  known 
that  "tart"  meant  "sour,"  yet  so  perverse  is  the 
imagination  that  I  conceived  it  to  be  a  sort  of 
transfigured  sugar-plum. 

The  costume  worn  by  the  little  boy  in  the 
educational  work  just  referred  to  was  quite  unique. 
I  fancy  it  must  have  been  the  English  fashion 


viii.]  and  English   Tradition.  143 

of  dressing  boys  of  twenty  years  earlier.  The 
cap  was  peculiar,  though  about  the  year  '56  we 
had  something  like  it  called  the  "  Pancake."  The 
collar  was  a  broad  band  of  linen  worn  outside 
the  jacket.  But  the  portion  of  his  apparel  with 
which  I  was  most  profoundly  impressed  was  a 
pair  of  incipient  swallow  tails.  The  possession 
of  these  did  not  seem  to  make  him  any  happier, 
he  had  become  so  used  to  them.  They  invariably 
attended  him  in  the  orchards,  the  meadows,  the 
gardens,  and  wherever  his  sunlit  young  existence 
wandered.  Envy  of  many  a  childish  day-dream, 
and  quite  as  wise,  I  think,  as  some  of  the  more 
recent  ones,  how  often  I  pondered  them  while 
the  cherry-trees  stood  alone  in  the  silent  play- 
ground, or  the  echoes  of  the  feet  of  a  solitary 
passer-by  came  with  a  sound  of  strange  and 
audacious  freedom  from  the  pavement  of  the 
street  below !  The  little  fellow  had  them  on 
when  he  and  his  sister  wandered  too  near  the 
bee-hive.  When  he  looked  toward  the  rising  sun, 
with  one  hand  pointing  to  the  South  and  the 
other  to  the  North,  it  was  these  little  coat-tails 
he  turned  to  the  West. 


144  Childhood  [vm. 

The  household  pictures  in  "  McGuffey  "  all  were 
English,  and  the  groups  were  certainly  presented 
in  an  amiable  light.  How  good  and  virtuous 
were  the  families  who  trimmed  the  evening  lamp 
in  the  pages  of  McGuffey 's  "  Second  Reader ;  " 
the  father,  how  firm  and  prudent ;  the  mother, 
how  wise,  how  tender,  how  solicitous.  (Indeed, 
the  grown  people  in  children's  books  are  always 
paragons.  The  readers  of  the  "  Rollo  Books " 
will  remember  that  Rollo's  father  and  mother 
appeared  to  have  been  born  parents ;  think  of 
Rollo's  father  and  mother  ever  being  divorced  !) 
There  was  a  picture  in  "  McGuffey "  of  the  little 
boy  I  have  described  walking  out  at  sunrise  with 
his  mother  to  hear  the  sky-lark.  She  has  told 
him  of  dawn  and  the  song  of  the  lark.  He  has 
been  but  seven  short  years  in  the  world  and  can 
remember  but  four  of  them  ;  seven  years,  which 
in  the  life  of  a  grown  man  pass  as  a  week  or  a 
month  passes.  He  has  never  seen  the  sun  rise, 
but  from  report  and  picture  he  is  as  familiar 
with  it  as  if  he  had  witnessed  it  in  Eden.  His 
mother  is  holding  him  by  the  hand,  and  they 
are  passing  a  high  wall.  It  is  the  moist,  whisper- 


VIIL]  and  English   Tradition.  145 

ing  dawn  of  a  summer's  day.  Up  in  one  corner 
of  the  picture  is  a  little  spot  which  is,  of  course, 
the  lark,  and  it  is  pouring  a  flood  of  melody 
over  the  scene.  The  reader  may  know  what 
that  picture  must  have  been  to  boys  whose 
meadows  were  the  morning-glories  which  skirted 
the  brick  pavement  of  the  kitchen-yard  while 
they  waited  for  their  breakfasts,  whose  butterfly 
was  the  winged  and  dusty  grasshopper  which 
tells  of  August  and  the  close  of  the  city  summer ! 
The  sunrise  is  not  often  seen  by  children,  except 
when  they  are  waked  early  for  some  picnic  or 
festival.  So  it  is  a  good  theme  for  the  young 
imagination.  The  English  sunrise  has,  besides 
the  lark  and  the  milkmaid,  all  the  charming 
accompaniments  of  the  chase.  Whatever  con- 
fusion there  may  have  been  about  larks  and 
cuckoos,  we  all  knew  that  only  in  the  English 
valleys  was  heard  the  horn  of  the  huntsman. 
There  is  in  the  window  of  a  saddler's  shop  in  St. 
James's  Street,  near  Pall  Mall,  a  coloured  en- 
graving of  a  landscape  at  sunrise.  In  the  fore 
ground  is  to  be  seen  a  mounted  huntsman  amid 
a  pack  of  hounds.  The  picture  was  familiar,  for 

L 


146  Childhood  [vm. 

years  before  I  had  often  come  upon  it,  thrust 
away  in  a  corner,  soiled  and  torn,  in  an  old 
garret,  where  I  went  in  search  of  lost  treasures 
among  handirons  and  broken  hobby-horses.  The 
huntsman's  honest  plebeian  face  tells  of  service 
for  the  happy,  sleeping  people  whom  his  horn 
will  soon  summon  to  the  chase.  The  dawn 
wakens  softly  over  meadows  that  have  not  yet 
begun  to  shine.  He  blows  his  trumpet,  and  his 
jolly  cheeks  are  puffed  as  he  startles  the  dim 
dwellings  and  the  drowsy  landscape  with  its 
saucy  echoes. 

Now  such  impressions  and  recollections  as 
these,  existing  as  they  do  in  many  thousands  of 
minds,  are  of  very  great  importance.  They  are 
of  real  political  significance.  How  ready  is  an 
American  to  greet  in  England  any  realisation 
of  these  dreams  of  his  childhood !  With  what 
pleased  recognition  does  he  exclaim,  "  Oh,  this 
is  you  ! "  and  "  I  have  heard  of  you  before."  I 
once  went  upon  a  visit  to  a  friend  of  mine,  who 
was  an  officer  in  a  yeomanry  regiment  at  that 
time  mustering  in  a  town  in  one  of  the  western 
shires  of  England.  The  colonel,  to  whom  I  was 


VIIL]  and  English   Tradition.  147 

introduced,  had  been  a  younger  son,  had  gone 
into  the  army  and  been  to  India.  But  he  had 
come  into  his  property,  and  was  now  a  country 
squire  with  a  large  family  and  handsome  for- 
tune. I  at  once  recognised  the  kind  of  man. 
They  said  he  had  eleven  daughters.  (What  a 
fine  old  English  sound  they  have  !)  During  the 
mess  dinner  the  regimental  band  played  from  a 
hall  adjoining.  The  colonel,  who  had  put  me 
next  him,  said,  "  I  wanted  to  see  if  the  band  could 
play  '  Yankee  Doodle/  but  I  find  they  don't  know 
it."  "How  good  of  you!"  I  exclaimed,  depre- 
cating the  mention  of  such  a  distinction.  "  Yes, 
yes,"  he  answered,  with  the  determined  manner 
of  one  who,  though  now  an  old  rustic,  perhaps, 
had  yet,  in  his  youth,  seen  something  of  the 
world,  and  knew  how  things  should  be  done,  "  I 
believe  in  every  honour  for  the  diplomatists."  As 
I  sat  there  listening  to  his  honest  talk,  my  mood 
grew  strangely  friendly.  "Should  war's  dread 
blast  against  them  blow,"  I  felt  that  I  wished  to 
be  ranged  on  the  side  of  the  kind  colonel  and 
his  eleven  daughters. 


The  Dancing-School  in  Tavistock 
Sqiiare. 


IN  London,  in  order  to  "get  on,"  one  must  be 
great  or  famous,  or  one  must  dance.  Unless  a 
man  is  a  very  decided  catch  and  an  object  to  the 
"  mammas,"  or  is  enough  of  a  lion  to  make  him  fit 
for  exhibition,  dancing  is  about  his  only  utility. 
The  average  London  man  of  society  thinks  dancing 
a  very  slow  amusement.  He  is  either  athletic 
and  prefers  hunting  and  yachting,  or  he  is  dis- 
solute, and  simple  pleasures  pall  upon  his  jaded 
appetite.  As  a  rule,  too,  the  important  young 
men  do  not  dance.  The  greater  a  man  is,  the 
more  is  he  careful  to  abstain  from  anything  which 
will  make  him  entertaining.  His  dulness  is  always 
in  proportion  to  his  distinction.  The  same  holds 
true  with  regard  to  conversation  or  to  any  other 


ix.]  The  Dancing- School.  149 

sort  of  contribution  to  the  amusement  of  others. 
He  only  is  agreeable  and  clever  from  whom  fortune 
has  withheld  better  gifts  than  talent  or  the  power 
of  pleasing.  He  only  would  be  witty  who  is  with- 
out solid  advantages.  A  "  talking  man  "  is  in 
danger  of  being  snubbed,  and  nobody  can  help 
pitying  the  ridiculous  fellows  who  sing  at  the 
afternoon  "  musicals." 

To  be  sure,  all  young  people  dance.  How 
would  "  golden  youth  "  be  possible  if  there  were 
no  ball-rooms  ?  But  when  men  get  toward  five- 
and-twenty,  those  who  can  afford  not  to  dance 
desert  the  balls  for  the  concert-saloons.  Young 
noblemen  and  eldest  sons  will  spend  a  few  moments 
at  the  parties,  and  as  a  great  favour  to  the  hostess, 
will  walk  through  a  quadrille  with  the  prettiest  girl 
in  the  room.  But  how  can  one  who  has  at  hand 
the  cancan  and  the  casinos  find  amusement  in  any- 
thing so  puerile  as  the  waltz  ?  Who  cares  to  talk 
to  humdrum  cousins  when  one  may  drink  bad 
champagne  with  painted  women  in  a  gilt  cafe"  near 
the  Haymarket  ?  It  is  only  cadets,  clerks  in  the 
Treasury,  youths  with  no  particular  expectations, 
who  dance.  Among  diplomatists,  attaches  waltz : 


150  The  Dancing-School  [ix. 

a  councillor  or  secretary  may  under  protest.  I 
knew  one  excessively  light-headed  envoy  who 
would  dance  now  and  then,  but  who  always  took 
care  to  dance  badly. 

The  talk  of  the  young  men  concerning  balls  and 
parties  is,  however,  to  be  taken  with  some  caution. 
They  are  "  bores,"  and  this  tone  the  poorer  young 
men  catch  from  the  more  fortunate  swells.  A 
clerk  in  one  of  the  offices,  when  I  asked  him  his 

destination,  said,  "  To  this ball."     Of  course, 

the  young  man  would  have  been  very  sorry  not  to 

have  got  a  card,  but  he  shuffled  off  to  "  this 

ball "  with  the  air  of  a  martyr.  Dancing  young 
men,  however,  are  scarce  enough  to  make  ladies 
who  give  parties  anxious  to  get  them  ;  and  if  one 
is  going  to  a  ball,  though  it  may  be  more  dignified 
to  walk  about  solus  and  stare,  it  is  certainly 
pleasanter  to  dance. 

Accordingly,  when  a  diplomatic  appointment 
made  me  a  resident  of  London,  I  determined  to 
learn  to  dance.  Cato  learned  Greek  when  he  was 
eighty,  and  I  was  twenty-five  before  I  could  do  the 
deux  temps.  I  was  reared  in  a  pious  household,  in 
which  dancing  was  thought  to  be  wicked.  After 


ix.]  in   Tavistock  Square.  151 

leaving  college  I  acquired  a  notion  of  my  own 
dignity  quite  inconsistent  with  so  frivolous  a 
pastime.  (I  give  my  experience  in  this  matter  at 
some  length,  because  I  know  it  will  represent  that 
of  a  great  many  others.)  But,  of  course,  I  outgrew 
this  dignity  in  time,  and  came  to  look  upon  that 
notion  as  only  another  and  rather  small  sort  of 
coxcombry.  Between  your  frivolous  and  your 
philosophic  coxcomb  I  much  prefer  the  former, 
as  the  more  amiable  of  the  two.  What  possible 
relation  had  the  conduct  of  my  legs  to  the  universe 
and  the  moral  law  ?  My  fear  of  dancing  was  a 
symptom  of  that  timidity  and  strength-destroying 
self-consciousness  which  possesses  so  many  people 
of  the  present  day.  They  are  enamoured  of 
superiority,  and  they  associate  certain  external 
images  with  the  fashionable  types  of  greatness 
they  admire.  A  little  energetic  thinking  would 
easily  rid  the  victim  of  such  reverie.  What  this 
philosophic  coxcomb  really  fears  is  not  the  essential 
unworthiness  of  the  pastime,  but  the  impression  of 
himself  he  reflects  in  the  minds  of  lookers-on. 

Omne  ignotum  pro  mirifico,  says  the  proverb.     I 
should  have  been  taught  to  dance  in  order  to  learn 


152  The  Dancing-School  [ix. 

that  dancing  is  no  very  wonderful  thing.  A  man 
who  could  put  his  arm  round  the  waist  of  a  pretty 
woman,  and  calmly  trust  himself  with  the  guidance 
of  his  floating  argosy  of  lace  and  tarlatan  about  a 
ball-room,  was  formerly  to  me  like  a  being  from 
another  sphere.  I  could  not  understand  how  that 
man  felt  His  ego  was  an  exalted  mystery.  A 
few  steps  at  Brooke's  academy  would  have  taught 
me  that  this  man  was  but  mortal,  and  might  have 
cured  me  of  my  depressing  sense  of  inferiority. 

I  once  did  attend  the  dancing-school  of  a  little 
village  in  Western  New  York.  This  village  was 
the  seat  of  a  very  radical  water-cure,  in  the  chapel 
of  which  there  was  a  service  on  Sundays  and  a 
dance  on  Tuesday  evenings.  The  ladies  were  all 
in  Bloomer  costume,  and  as  the  institution  was 
radical  socially  as  well  as  in  religion  and  politics, 
the  cooks,  laundresses,  and  chambermaids  were 
always  asked  to  the  balls.  These  were,  in  fact, 
the  only  healthy  people  present.  Your  vis-a-vis 
was  usually  a  lady  with  an  affection  of  the  neck  or 
a  gentleman  with  a  wet  towel  round  his  forehead. 
One  gentleman,  I  remember,  with  a  towel  about 
his  head  and  a  neck  awry,  had  a  chair  set  for  him 


ix.]  in   Tavistock   Square.  153 

which  he  occupied  while  the  side  couples  were 
dancing  :  when  the  time  came  he  sprang  up  with 
great  alacrity,  gallantly  and  playfully  flung  out  his 
right  foot,  and  walked  through  the  step  in  the  most 
punctilious  manner. 

One's  imagination  was  not  fascinated  by  the 
felicity  of  whirling  round  the  room  one  of  these 
invalids  in  short  clothes  and  trousers.  Still,  I  did 
go  to  the  village  dancing-school  with  the  intention 
of  learning  to  waltz.  But  I  found  it  was  only  the 
little  girls  who  were  pupils  :  their  sisters  merely 
came  to  look  on  and  chat.  I  did  not  care  to  enact 
the  directions  of  the  master  before  all  the  smiling 
young  society  of  Bunbury.  The  only  pupil  of 
riper  age  I  ever  saw  at  the  school  was  Miss 
Carker,  the  lady  doctress  from  the  water-cure. 
She  was  dressed  at  the  time  almost  like  a  man, 
and  her  hair  was  parted  on  the  side.  She  pre- 
sented herself  as  a  scholar,  and  the  professor,  who 
had  never  seen  her  before,  was  sorely  puzzled 
where  to  put  her.  He  did  not  like  to  ask  her. 
There  was  a  long  continuous  row  of  children 
standing  at  the  time,  the  upper  half  of  which 
were  girls  and  the  lower  half  boys.  The  professor 


154  The  Dancing-School  [ix. 

wittily  extricated  himself  by  placing  her  just  in  the 
middle  and  letting  her  decide  for  herself. 

In  London  I  found  it  quite  necessary  that  I 
should  put  myself  under  the  care  of  some  in- 
structor, and  I  was  commended  to  the  academy 
of  Mrs.  Watson,  in  Tavistock  Square.  Tavistock 
Square,  the  reader  will  remember,  is  situate  in  the 
dim  regions  of  Bloomsbury,  once  an  aristocratic 
quarter,  but  now  quite  given  up  to  lodging-houses 
and  the  private  dwellings  of  attorneys  and  mer- 
chants. Here  lives  on  the  second  floor  an 
economical  widow,  who  supports  a  son  at  the 
university ;  a  Spanish  conspirator,  Communist,  or 
exile  of  the  Thiers  government  occupies  the  third  ; 
an  American  Senator,  even,  who  is  verdant  or  un- 
ambitious, may  find  his  way  with  his  family  into 
the  first.  Upon  the  whole,  it  is  a  gloomy  neigh- 
bourhood. All  Bloomsbury  has  much  the  same 
look — the  most  unlovely  part  of  London,  or  indeed 
of  England.  For  my  part,  I  believe  I  prefer  Seven 
Dials. 

Mrs.  Watson  was  a  very  large  woman.  She 
was,  however,  a  very  good  and  agreeable  person, 
and  an  excellent  teacher.  There  were  besides 


lx-]  in   Tavistock  Square.  155 

several  nieces,  rather  pretty  girls,  who  assisted 
her  in  the  education  of  the  young  men.  It  seemed 
to  me  an  odd  sort  of  profession  for  a  young  lady. 
Twelve  hours  out  of  the  day  and  twelve  months 
out  of  the  year  they  were  saying,  "  Take  my  right 

hand  with  your  left,  and  put  your  right  arm " 

This  latter  instruction  the  preceptress  did  not 
finish  in  words,  but  the  pupil  seemed  to  compre- 
hend his  duty  by  intuition.  "  That  is  very  well," 
said  the  lady. 

These  young  ladies  were  very  nice,  and  of 
course  perfectly  respectable,  but  they  did  not 
appear  to  me  to  be  envied.  Society  is  not  kind 
to  a  poor  girl  in  England.  That  her  position  here 
is  different  is  due  not  to  any  superior  charity  or 
chivalry  of  ours,  but  to  our  luckier  circumstances. 
Society  in  Europe  assumes  toward  her  that  tone 
of  scarcely  concealed  contempt  which  the  strong 
and  successful  must  inevitably  hold  towards  the 
weak.  The  talk  of  the  young  men  concerning 
her  is,  I  think,  not  so  respectful  as  in  this  country. 
Of  course,  where  such  a  sentiment  exists,  the 
dignity  of  the  objects  of  it  must  be  somewhat 
impaired.  It  is  only  the  exceptional  people  who 


156  The  Dancing-School  fix. 

can  resolutely  hold  their  own  sense  of  themselves 
against  the  mood  of  society. 

These  ladies,  I  say,  assisted  Mrs.  Watson.  She 
herself  usually  undertook  the  initiation  of  the 
patient  Mrs.  Watson  was  not  only  large,  but 
strong,  resolute,  and  conscientious.  Moreover, 
she  was  not  a  person  to  put  up  with  any  indolence 
or  false  shame  on  the  part  of  a  pupil.  I  had  for 
years  been  enamoured  of  passivity.  "  I  do  not 
like  to  be  moved,"  says  Clough.  That  poet  and 
much-musing  philosopher  liked  to  feel  himself 
at  the  centre  of  innumerable  radii  of  possibilities, 
rather  than  as  moving  in  any  one  line  by  which  he 
was  plainly  and  irrevocably  committed.  But  Mrs. 
Watson  was  not  a  person  to  encourage  any  in- 
decision of  this  kind.  After  a  preliminary  word 
or  two  she  took  me  firmly  by  each  hand  and  began 
jumping  me  back  and  forth,  saying,  "One,  two, 
three,  four,"  &c.  Be  it  remembered  that  I  was  the 
only  performer  in  the  room,  and  that  all  the  lady 
assistants  and  a  pupil  or  two,  who  were  waiting 
their  turns,  were  looking  on.  Mrs.  Watson,  be- 
coming satisfied  with  my  proficiency  in  the  piston 
movement,  wished  to  see  what  I  could  do  in  a 


ix. j  in  Tavistcck  Square.  157 

rotary  way.  She  began  by  sending  me  round  the 
room  by  myself,  spinning  like  a  top.  When  I 
gave  signs  of  running  down,  she  struck  me  again 
on  the  arm  and  sent  me  round  faster.  Really, 
for  a  person  with  some  pretensions  of  sobriety, 
this  was  pretty  thorough  treatment  I  was  sure 
the  young  assistants  must  be  screaming  with 
laughter,  and  I  was  not  sorry  when  I  passed 
into  the  hands  of  these  milder  and  less  muscular 
preceptresses. 

I  was  very  proud  when  I  had  learned  the  deux 
temps.  I  really  thought  myself  a  very  accom- 
plished young  man.  But  Mrs.  Watson  said  that  it 
was  quite  necessary,  absolutely  indispensable,  that 
I  should  learn  the  trois  temps.  I  had  got  on  very 
well  with  the  deux  temps,  but  what  labours  I  under- 
went in  the  acquisition  of  the  trois  temps,  and  what 
giggling  of  the  lady  assistants  I  braved,  and  what 
screams  of  stifled  laughter  from  a  very  jolly  cousin 
of  Mrs.  Watson,  who  was  visiting  from  the  country, 
and  who  came  in  to  look  at  us,  I  will  not  here 
relate.  I  was  absolutely  made  to  stand  on  one 
foot  and  hop.  It  was  incredibly  painful,  but  I 
bore  it  all,  as  children  take  medicine,  because  I 


158  TJte  Dancing-School.  [ix. 

thought  it  was  good  for  me.  The  reader  will 
fancy  the  bitterness  of  my  feelings  when  I  dis- 
covered that  it  was  all  in  vain.  The  trois  temps 
was  not  danced  at  all  in  London :  the  deux  temps 
was  universal. 

There  was  no  personage  of  the  dancing-academy 
in  Tavistock  so  interesting  to  me  as  its  mistress, 
Mrs.  Watson,  whose  gentle  and  dapper  little 
husband  played  the  violin.  Mrs.  Watson  was 
rarely  seen  except  on  great  and  critical  occasions. 
Her  full  habit  of  body  and  long  service  entitled 
her,  she  thought,  to  repose.  But  she  would  now 
and  then  walk  with  majesty  and  old-time  elegance 
through  a  figure  of  a  quadrille,  taking  hold  of  her 
petticoat  with  thumb  and  finger  of  each  hand,  and 
coquettishly  fanning  and  flirting  it.  She  did  not 
often  waltz  or  galop,  but  sometimes,  in  enforcing 
a  lesson,  she  would  commit  herself  to  the  undula- 
tions of  the  dance,  and  sail  or  swim  about  the 
room,  sola.  She  was  as  a  rule  a  very  good,  kind, 
and  sensible  woman,  and  she  had,  moreover,  a  few 
fine  antique  graces  which  she  would  bring  out 
when  circumstances  seemed  to  call  for  them. 
Among  these  was  a  very  superb  method  of  leaving 


ix.]  in  Tavistock  Sqiiare.  159 

the  room  which  she  gave  us  occasionally.  If  the 
conversation  turned  upon  fine  society  (I  believe 
she  thought  me  rather  a  man  of  fashion),  and  if 
she  had  seen  my  name  in  the  Morning  Post  that 
morning,  she  would  treat  me  to  one  of  these.  "  I 
bid  you  good  morning,"  she  would  say ;  and 
lifting  her  petticoat  with  thumb  and  finger,  she 
executed  a  retreat  backward  with  some  six  steps, 
and,  laying  her  hand  upon  the  door-knob,  vanished 
with  a  peculiar  grace  and  dignity. 

Of  the  school  in  Tavistock  Square,  besides  the 
accomplishments  which  I  there  gained,  and  which  I 
highly  prize,  I  retain  a  little  memento  in  the  shape 
of  Mrs.  Watson's  "Manual  for  Dancing,"  a  tiny  book 
which  now  lies  on  my  table.  It  contains,  besides 
descriptions  of  quadrilles,  polkas,  galops,  &c., 
much  excellent  advice  upon  general  behaviour 
which  recalls  the  little  institution  quite  vividly. 
Occasionally  the  little  document  becomes  severe, 
almost  sarcastic.  "All  skipping,  hopping,  and 
violent  motion  should  be  restrained."  Again  we 
are  told  that  vis-a-vis  must  not  meet  each  other 
"  with  proud  looks  and  averted  glances,"  but  "  with 
a  smile"  and  "a  pleasant  recognition."  "True 


160  The  Dancing-School.  [ix. 

politeness  is  entirely  compatible  with  a  kind  dis- 
position. In  our  higher  classes  unreserved  and 
agreeable  manners  prevail  much  more  than  in  the 
middling  ranks  of  society." 


Contrasts  of  Scenery, 


I  HAVE  never  been  so  struck  with  the  sublimity  of 
great  cities  as  in  August  eventides  in  the  depths 
of  dog-days.  At  such  an  hour,  when  in  London,  I 
used  to  go  to  Trafalgar  Square.  Instead  of  the 
usual  paltry  plots  of  grass,  that  square  has  a  broad 
floor  of  stone,  which  immensely  enhances  its  im- 
pressiveness.*  Only  a  few  weary  feet  broke  the 
stillness  of  the  place.  The  golden  clouds  of  dust 
choked  the  vistas  of  the  streets.  Silently  out  of 
their  grimy  mouths  the  fountains  glided.  I  heard 
all  round  the  desolate  roar  of  the  city.  The  granite 
column  seemed  borne  upward  and  to  swim  in  the 

*  There  is  a  profuse  and  profound  wealth  of  fancy  and  expression 
in  this  line  of  one  of  the  sonnets  of  Shakespere, — 

"Than  unswept  stone  besmeared  with  sluttish  time." 

H 


1 62  Contrasts  of  Scenery  [x. 

air,  and  Nelson  from  its  summit  looked  far  away 
to  Egypt  and  the  Nile. 

Art  is  stronger  than  nature  in  the  old  countries. 
Nowhere  in  England  do  you  ever  get  well  out  of 
London  ;  the  town  inflames  the  island  to  its  ex- 
tremities. London  is  strong  as  disease  is  strong. 
Many  a  time,  swinging  about  the  streets  in  the 
"gondola  of  London,"  the  hansom  cab,  I  have 
wondered  that  so  great  a  place  should  be  so  low — 
should  have  so  little  height.  The  inequalities  on 
the  surface  of  an  orange,  we  are  told,  vastly 
exaggerate  the  hills  and  valleys  of  the  globe. 
London  is  scarcely  higher  than  if  the  surface  of 
the  earth  upon  which  it  lies  had  been  scratched 
with  a  file.  Yet  so  potent  has  it  been  to  change 
the  entire  face  of  that  part  of  the  world  which  it 
dominates. 

Nature  has  been  chased  out  of  England  into  the 
sea.  In  Europe  man  is  scarcely  conscious  of  the 
presence  of  nature.  Here  nature  is  scarcely  con- 
scious of  the  presence  of  man.  Perhaps,  indeed,  on 
our  Atlantic  border,  she  is  just  waking  to  a  sense 
that  her  rest  is  broken  by  the  foot  of  the  intruder. 
But  in  England  nature  has  been  quite  subjugated. 


x.]  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  163 

The  fence  and  the  furrow  are  everywhere.  You 
find  yourself  by  a  lonely  tarn  at  the  bottom  of  a 
sweet  breathing  ravine,  and  you  say,  "  Surely  here 
is  something  primeval ;"  but  you  have  only  to  look 
up  to  where  the  sharp  back  of  the  mountain  cuts 
the  sky,  to  see  a  stone  fence  riding  it  with  a  giddy 
tenacity,  and  holding  on  for  dear  life.  We  miss  the 
feelings  with  which  newer  and  wilder  scenes  inspire 
us.  English  scenery  is  always  pleasing,  perhaps 
the  most  agreeable  for  any  common  condition  of 
mind  that  can  be  found.  Nowhere  is  there  such  a 
pretty  country  to  have  picnics  in.  What  wind  so 
careless  as  that  which  fans  the  cheeks  of  August 
tourists,  whose  table  is  spread  half-way  up  some 
hill-side  in  Devon  ?  In  the  morning,  when  the 
youth  of  the  day  supplements  the  age  of  nature, 
then  we  see  the  English  landscape  in  its  best. 
The  air  is  sweet  and  the  sod  greener  than  else- 
where, and  the  foldings  of  the  hills  and  hollows 
are  lovely  and  surprising.  But  the  beauty  is  for 
the  eye  ;  it  fails  to  touch  the  heart.  This  seemed 
to  be  true  even  of  the  scenerj-  in  Wales.  It  was 
very  impressive.  The  Welsh  mountains  were  very 
old  ;  the  wind  of  the  heather  wandered  gravely 


1 64  Cont-i  asts  of  Scenery.  [x. 

from  the  sweet,  sad  fields  of  the  most  distant 
part ;  the  verdure  of  the  margin  of  that  shining 
estuary  that  sets  up  to  Dolgelly,  through  the 
greenest  green,  is  enriched  by  the  yellow  of  the 
buttercups. 

Nevertheless  there  was  an  incompleteness  that  I 
could  not  suppose  to  be  altogether  in  myself,  for 
the  ocean  had  its  moods  as  sublime  or  bright  as 
where  its  evening  waves  flow  round  the  light-ship 
at  Sandy  Hook.  The  waters  came  to  the  cottage 
thresholds  and  to  the  gates  of  the  gardens.  Late 
one  afternoon,  as  I  sat  looking  over  the  blue,  bright 
ocean,  there  came  under  my  window  a  proud- 
stepping  fellow  with  a  plaid,  and  a  feather  in  his 
bonnet,  playing  upon  the  bagpipes.  A  pure  and 
stainless  sunset  was  approaching.  The  sweet 
breeze  from  the  heather  ran  about  the  streets  at 
will.  Far  out  over  the  quiet,  flickering  waters 
wandered  the  notes  of  the  bagpipes,  flew,  and 
were  wafted  westward.  The  children  danced 
about  the  piper,  and  their  feet  moved  to  the 
music  and  to  the  fast-changing  moments  of  the 
sunset.  But  the  landlord  came  out  before  the  door 
bare-headed  and  rang  the  bell,  and  the  bagpiper 


x.J  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  165 

ceased  suddenly  and  went  away  with  the  children, 
and  the  sun  dropped  down  behind  the  wave,  and  I, 
with  that  rude  haste  with  which  we  extinguish 
delights  we  know  to  be  too  evanescent — went  to 
dinner. 

For  the  purposes  of  comfort  the  English  climate 
is  better  than  ours.  I  have  heard  this  denied,  but 
am  sure  that  it  is  so.  One  has  only  to  remember 
that  the  fashionable  hour  for  horseback  riding  in 
London  is  from  twelve  to  two  in  the  summer 
months.  Nobody  can  ride  at  that  hour  any- 
where in  this  country.  The  equestrian  here  has 
a  choice  between  sunrise,  sunset,  and  moonlight ; 
unless,  as  used  to  be  common  in  the  South,  he 
rides  with  an  umbrella.  But  for  poetry  and  the 
observance  of  nature  our  climate  is  better.  The 
English  summer  never  commits  itself.  It  is  always 
lingering  April  or  premature  October.  If  you  go 
out  at  night  to  walk  in  the  moonlight  or  to  sit  by 
the  sea-shore,  you  must  take  an  overcoat.  Here, 
about  the  last  of  June,  we  have  a  sweltering  week 
or  two,  in  which  everybody  unlearns  the  use  of 
overcoats.  We  then  understand  that  it  is  summer, 
and  that  it  will  stay  summer.  To  be  sure,  if  you 


1 66  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  [x. 

are  in  search  of  some  poor  churlish  spot  where 
you  may  forego  nature  and  the  miracle  of  summer 
for  the  sake  of  keeping  cool,  you  may  find  it  on 
the  coast  of  Maine.  But  if  deeper  pastimes  entice 
you,  and  more  verdurous  hill-sides ;  if  you  would 
sit  in  some  rose-embowered  porch,  while  yet  the 
blue-eyed  mist  lingers  in  the  farthest  recesses  of 
the  mountain  gorge,  then  it  is  to  the  Susquehanna 
or  the  Kanawha  you  must  go.  There,  where  the 
chestnut  shade  cools  the  edge  of  the  hot,  humming 
meadow,  you  may  lie,  your  hands  stained  with  the 
dark,  deep  clover.  On  indolent  afternoons  your 
scow  will  float  through  those  silent  scenes,  you 
hearing  only  the  dull  lapping  of  the  river  at  the 
thirsty  keel. 

I  may  here  say  that  one  great  disadvantage  for 
any  person  desiring  to  look  at  an  English  land- 
scape is  the  absence  of  good  fences  to  sit  upon ; 
the  ground  is  usually  too  damp  to  permit  one  to 
lie  full  length.  I  missed  very  much  the  rail  fences 
of  my  own  country.  I  would  come  to  a  pretty 
prospect,  and  my  legs  sinking  under  me,  I  would 
look  about  for  a  place  to  sit.  The  inhospitable 
landscape  had  not  a  single  suggestion.  There 


x.]  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  167 

were  no  stones,  and  a  hedge  was,  of  course,  not 
to  be  thought  of.  How  different  the  stake-and- 
rider  fences  of  this  land  of  ours  !  The  top  rail  of  a 
good  fence  is  as  fine  a  seat  as  one  can  wish.  Of 
course,  much  depends  upon  the  shape  and  posi- 
tion of  the  rail.  Sometimes  the  upper  rail  is 
sharp  and  knotted.  But  one  has  only  to  walk 
on  for  a  rod  or  two  before  a  perfect  seat  can 
be  found,  and  this  point  I  have  discovered  to  be 
the  very  best  from  which  the  scene  may  be  viewed. 
It  really  appears  as  if  the  honest  farmer  had 
builded  better  than  he  knew.  If  there  is  one 
place  from  which  to  overlook  a  landscape  to  be 
preferred  to  another,  I  have  always  found  that 
nature,  so  far  from  betraying  him  that  loved  her. 
had  actually  put  there  the  properly  shaped  rail 
at  his  disposal. 

The  streams  of  England  are  unclean.  Waters 
that  the  poets  have  made  famous  smell  abominably. 
Consider  the  task  the  poets  would  have  to  immor- 
talise all  the  running  water  of  our  Atlantic  slope. 
Unsung,  unnamed  even,  with  pure  noises  they 
hasten  to  their  river-beds.  For  many  miles  by 
the  railway  which  traverses  North  Wales,  the  Dee 


1 68  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  [x. 

brawls  along  with  a  tumult  of  green  waters.  From 
the  car  window  it  looked  enticing,  and  I  thought 
I  would  stay  over  a  day  at  Llangollen  and  walk 
along  the  banks.  At  Llangollen  is  "  The  Hand," 
over  which  presides  a  gentle  and  unique  landlady, 
who  carries  a  bunch  of  keys,  and  greets  you  with 
that  curious  cramp  of  the  knees  called  a  courtesy. 
(If  you  would  see  a  courtesy,  you  must  go  to 
England  very  soon,  for  the  Radicals  will  have  put 
a  stop  to  it  in  a  year  or  two  more.)  There  was 
hanging  in  the  coffee-room  a  picture  of  Sir  William 
Somebody,  the  great  man  of  the  neighbourhood. 
His  left  arm  he  rested  upon  the  withers  of  a  great 
black  hunter,  while  his  wife,  buxom  and  beautiful, 
leaned  upon  the  other.  Some  happy  dogs  were 
playing  about  his  feet.  There  were  two  or  three 
more  engravings  of  the  kind  well  known  to  fre- 
quenters of  English  inns.  Upon  a  table  in  the 
middle  of  the  room  were  the  cold  meats,  the  pies, 
the  tarts,  the  custards,  and  the  berries.  In  the 
corner,  a  lunch  was  spread  for  two  collegians  who 
were  travelling  with  their  tutor.  All  this  you 
saw  to  the  music  of  the  old  blind  harper,  who 
sat  just  outside  the  door  by  the  high  clock  in 


x.]  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  169 

the  -windy  hall.  Here,  too,  was  the  prettiest  girl 
I  saw  in  Wales.  She  told  me  she  was  sixteen, 
and  I  believed  her.  You  talk  of  strawberries  and 
cream — a  namby-pamby  and  silly  expression — she 
was  blackberries  and  cream.  She  was  there  with 
her  brother  Arthur,  a  youth  two  years  older  than 
herself,  the  guide,  philosopher,  and  financier  of  the 
party :  the  pair  were  the  children  of  a  Bristol 
music-teacher.  We  lunched  together,  and  the  girl 
cut  the  pie  with  her  own  hands.  She  had  been 
twice  to  London.  When  I  asked  her  where  she 
stayed  when  she  came  there,  she  said,  "At  Mr. 
Hawkins's,"  as  if  that  were  enough.  Was  there 
ever  such  a  delightful  answer ! 

I  tell  this  because  it  is  only  fair  to  Llangollen 
that  I  should.  Any  little  nameless  stream  in  the 
Shenandoah  Valley  is  better  than  the  Dee.  But 
in  the  tavern  near  there  would  have  been  no 
landlady  with  the  keys,  nor  the  really  good  music 
of  the  harper,  nor  the  table  spread  with  tarts  and 
berries,  nor  very  likely  the  pretty  girl.  The  green 
waters  of  the  Dee,  cool  and  clean  enough  a  few 
rods  off,  I  found,  when  I  came  nearer,  washing 
over  noisome,  stinking  rocks.  I  followed  the  slip^ 


170  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  [x. 

ping  banks  a  mile  or  so,  and  then  took  the 
macadamised  road  that  runs  above  the  river.  I 
very  soon  found  my  way  back  to  the  inn,  and 
went  with  Arthur  and  his  sister  to  a  village  enter- 
tainment. We  sat  upon  the  front  bench,  and  saw 
a  burlesque  of  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold, 
performed  by  four  metropolitan  stars,  upon  a  stage 
eight  feet  by  twelve. 

I  have  spoken  of  art  as  strong  and  of  nature 
as  weak  in  the  Old  World.  In  scenes  in  which 
art  and  nature  mingle,  England,  I  suppose,  is 
unsurpassed.  The  little  I  saw  of  rural  England 
was  mainly  on  Sundays,  and  then  I  could  rarely 
get  far  away  from  London.  There  are  influences 
which  nature  appears  to  borrow  from  society.  The 
Christian  Sunday  seems  to  impart  to  the  pristine 
beauty  of  our  own  landscape  an  intenser  purity. 
Here,  where  the  virgin  altars  are  set  up  in  glades 
whose  stillness  is  broken  only  by  the  noise  of  the 
primeval  streams,  where  the  spires  shine  afar  over 
our  summer  wildernesses,  the  face  of  nature  is 
conscious  of  the  religion  of  man.  There  is,  on  a 
Sunday  afternoon,  in  the  long  street  which  climbs 
the  hill  of  a  New  England  village,  an  unattainable 


x.]  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  171 

severity,  an  almost  bitter  silence.  On  a  Sunday 
morning,  when  the  village  bells  are  silent,  to  me, 
sitting  under  the  trees  of  an  orchard  in  blossom, 
there  is  in  the  air  a  strange  reproof,  a  pungent 
purity,  which  renders  obvious  a  canker  in  the 
midst  of  the  blue  sunlight  and  the  bloom.  These 
impressions  must  of  course  exist  in  England, 
though  my  occupations  in  London  were  such  as 
to  give  me  little  leisure  to  taste  the  wild  silences 
and  asperities  of  the  rural  Sunday  afternoon.  In 
one  of  the  few  suburbs  of  London  yet  compara- 
tively free  from  the  ravages  of  convenience  and 
respectability,  there  was  an  old  green-walled  gar- 
den-plot, to  which  I  was  permitted  to  repair  at 
that  hour.  I  sat  alone  upon  a  broken,  dirty,  iron 

bench  (I  beg  the  T 's  pardon  for  calling  their 

bench  dirty),  and  under  an  old  pear-tree.  It  was 
a  long  patch  of  sod  and  flowers.  The  brick  walls 
were  rent  and  decayed,  and,  except  where  the 
peach  and  the  vine  covered  them,  were  green 
with  moss  and  black  with  age.  The  neighbouring 
gardens  I  only  knew  by  the  tops  of  the  pear  and 
may-trees.  No  sound  came  from  them  save  the 
rustle  of  their  greenery,  which  now  and  then  dis- 


172  Contrasts  of  Scenery.  [x. 

turbed  the  heart  of  the  quiet  hour.  Of  the  children 
who  played  in  them,  of  the  maidens  who  knelt 
among  their  flowers,  I  knew  nothing.  The  same 
sunshine  and  yellow  haze  filled  them  all,  the  same 
Sabbath  silence.  From  out  their  narrow  plots  all 
looked  upward  to  the  same  blue  sky.  I  used  to 
think  that  the  gardens  never  ended,  but  lay  side  by 
side  the  island  through,  and  that  the  sea  washed 
them  ail  around. 


New  York  and  London  Winters. 


AN  English  winter  all  men  have  agreed  to  con- 
sider as  the  greatest  discomfort  under  which  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Isles  suffer.  The  day  is  dark 
by  two,  and  one  can  scarcely  read  before  ten  in  the 
morning.  Yet  the  densest,  yellowest  fogs  in  which 
poor  Londoners  grope  from  house  to  house  to  find 
their  door-bells,  the  all-day  rains  tnat  drown  the 
cabbies,  and  shadow  the  large,  dark,  hospitable 
windows  of  the  inns — all  these  are  very  pleasant, 
soothing,  and  inviting  in  comparison  with  such 
persistent  slush  and  foul  weather,  such  protracted 
out-of-door  misery  as  we  suffer  sometimes  in  New 
York.  There  is  a  jerking  and  incessant  quality 
in  our  winter  weather.  It  is  no  sooner  allayed 
and  softened  than  it  is  up  and  at  it  again,  until 
patience  can  support  it  no  longer,  and  one  yields 


174  New  York  [n. 

one's  self  to  be  jolted  along  by  fate.  An  English 
winter  is  disagreeable  rather  than  violent ;  it  is  no 
such  tax  upon  human  nerves  and  patience  as  our 
own.  Of  course,  your  feet  are  never  clean  ;  your 
eyes  smart  with  the  fogs ;  the  east  wind  withers 
you  ;  but  you  are,  somehow,  soon  beset  with  a  soft 
and  dirty  uncomfortableness,  to  which,  once  having 
succumbed,  you  continue  in  contented  subjection. 

We  are  not  sure  that  the  overhead  London 
winter  has  not  been  a  little  slandered.  The  sun 
comes  out  at  times  very  softly,  and  as  you  look 
over  the  wet  sod  and  blue  wintry  thickets  of  Green 
and  St.  James's  Parks,  the  towers  of  the  Abbey 
catch  from  the  air  a  natural  or  artificial  blue, 
exquisite  and  quite  indefinable.  But  they  have 
nothing  like  the  exhilaration  of  our  cold  moon- 
light and  starlight  heavens.  They  have  nothing 
like  our  successive  days  of  hard,  bright  weather. 
They  have  nothing  like  that  frozen  blue-green  sky 
of  our  January  nights,  with  the  moon  apparently 
congealed  in  the  midst  of  it.  On  a  late  Sunday, 
looking  over  the  bay  at  sundown,  there  arose  a 
scene  so  wild,  strong,  and  sublime,  that  the 
beholder  could  scarcely  believe  himself  in  the 


XL]  and  London    Winters,  175 

midst  of  a  city  of  a  million  people.  The  desolate 
bay,  jammed  with  ice  from  the  wharves  to  the 
wood-fringed  Jersey  hills,  lay  as  silent  and  stern 
as  any  untrodden  unfamiliar  place  in  the  heart  of 
the  Andes  or  the  Himalayas.  There  is  a  vital 
hour  of  the  landscape,  which,  at  summer  sunsets, 
is  very  evanescent  The  day  concentrates  into  its 
parting  glance  a  swift,  intense  meaning.  Turn 
your  back  upon  it  a  moment,  or  shut  your  eyes, 
and  it  is  gone ;  but,  on  this  evening,  all  around 
the  city  roofs,  the  hills,  and  the  ice-fields,  there 
lingered  a  deep,  strong  crimson  almost  frozen  into 
the  sky. 

The  puissance  of  nature  over  man  here,  and 
its  unconsciousness  of  him,  even  in  the  very 
ways  of  his  cities,  is  strangely  apparent  to  the 
European.  We  shoot  about  the  rivers  in  our 
ferry-boats,  and  wheel  in  our  omnibuses  through 
the  drifts  of  the  streets,  and  all  the  time  the  snow- 
storms roar  over  us,  and  the  whirlwinds  enwrap 
us  and  hide  us  from  skies  which  scarcely  notice 
us,  and  shut  us  in  from  a  world  upon  which  we 
scarcely  make  any  impression. 


The  Evening  Call. 


THE  evening  call  is  a  peculiarity  of  American  life. 
The  strict  watch  kept  over  the  family  would  make 
that  institution,  as  it  exists  among  us,  quite  an 
impossibility  on  the  continent  of  Europe.  In 
England,  where  there  is  greater  freedom  for 
unmarried  women,  this  evening  cannot  very  well 
be  used  for  calling,  owing  to  the  lateness  of  the 
dinner  hour.  The  question  of  dinner  is,  indeed, 
very  much  involved  in  the  matter.  It  is  quite 
impossible  that  it  should  be  later  than  six  without 
either  unhappily  shortening  that  ceremony  or 
infringing  on  the  hour  for  the  call.  While  dinner 
is  certainly  a  pleasanter  meal  taken  in  the  evening 
than  earlier,  we  must  remember  that  the  evening 
is  the  best  hour  of  the  day  for  social  enjoyment, 
no  matter  how  we  pass  it.  It  is  the  instinct  of 


XIL]  The  Evening  Call.  177 

man  to  have  the  best  thing  last ;  we  should  always 
be  happiest  just  before  going  to  bed.  Yet  in 
considering  the  question  whether  the  evening  is 
better  as  we  pass  it,  or  as  the  English  do  after  an 
eight  o'clock  dinner,  there  is  much  to  be  said  on 
both  sides.  Both  ways  are  undoubtedly  good,  but 
upon  the  whole  a  change  to  the  English  custom 
would  be  rather  for  the  worse.  Comparing  roughly 
the  pros  and  cons  of  the  subject,  we  might  say  that 
the  English  habit  is  better  for  families,  and  our 
own  better  for  the  morals  and  well-being  of  the 
bachelors. 

We  would  certainly  not  underrate  the  magical 
effect  of  a  dress  coat  and  white  bosom  upon  the 
drooping  faculties.  The  English  dinner  makes  a 
rubicon  dividing  by  a  broad  line  the  day  of  work 
from  the  day  of  relaxation.  The  diner  washes  Dff 
the  toil  of  the  day  with  its  soot  and  grime.  No 
matter  how  tired  or  languid  he  may  be,  the  more 
act  of  dressing  seems  to  put  a  new  song  in  his 
mouth.  He  becomes  pert  and  audacious,  and 
bears  down  upon  his  acquaintance  with  the  delight 
and  pharisaic  feeling  of  cleanliness  and  good 
apparel.  He  has  a  distinct  consciousness  of  his 


178  The  Evening  Call.  [xu. 

linen.  He  is  well  aware  of  the  difference  between 
himself  and  any  unclean  thing.  All  this  is  very 
pleasant  The  English  dinner  certainly  has  this 
consideration  in  its  favour,  and  for  families  even 
higher  ones. 

But  it  bears  hardly  upon  the  bachelors,  who 
transact  their  solitary  meals  with  speed,  and  have 
nobody  to  go  to  see.  On  the  score  of  comfort, 
though,  some  bachelors  in  England  are  very  well 
off.  The  club  men,  as  a  rule,  need  no  sympathy ; 
their  misfortunes  are  not  of  the  material  kind. 
The  miserable  people  are  the  men  who  are  com- 
pelled to  live  at  the  hotels  and  restaurants.  The 
British  lion  who  stares  out  of  the  club  windows 
is  a  well-kept  contented  beast  But  there  is  no 
happiness  for  that  lean  creature  who,  as  hunger 
possesses  him,  must  lash  his  sides  with  his  tail, 
and  wretchedly  reflect  whether  he  will  lie  in  wait 
at  the  nearest  chop-house  for  whatever  comes 
along,  or  daintily  devour  a  bird  or  two  at  the 
Pall  Mall  Restaurant,  or  pounce  upon  a  leg  of 
mutton  at  Simpson's  in  the  Strand.  The  club  is 
the  admirable  result  of  long  experience.  Not  in 
vain  have  the  bachelors  of  the  past  lived  and 


xii.]  The  Evening  Call.  179 

suffered.  Pretty  furniture,  good  cooking,  and 
agreeable  company  unite  to  make  a  pleasant  im- 
pression. The  dining-rooms,  which  are  usually 
small,  have  perhaps  a  dozen  tables,  one  of  which 
the  diner  has  to  himself.  A  wax  candle  is  placed 
upon  each,  with  a  white  paper  shade  about  it 
The  cloths  and  napkins  are  spotless,  and  the 
glasses  glistening.  Men  usually  read  at  dinner, 
when  alone,  books  or  magazines  out  of  the  library  ; 
and  two  men  who  have  not  much  talk,  even  when 
dining  together,  will  read.  The  young  men  usually 
dress ;  and  the  room,  with  its  pretty  tables,  and 
its  florid,  well-dressed  occupants,  makes  an  agree- 
able, appetising  impression.  Physically,  then,  the 
bachelors  are  well  enough  off.  In  other  respects 
they  are  not  so  fortunate.  Their  privations  begin 
when  dinner  is  over.  They  must  then  go  to  the 
smoking-room,  and  have  coffee  and  chat ;  or, 
pleasantly  gorged  and  fuddled,  lounge  and  bask 
before  an  open  fire.  This,  again,  is  not  so  bad, 
but  they  tire  of  it  in  time.  The  trouble  is  that 
one  half  of  the  great  human  race  is  excluded  ; 
they  wish  to  see  that  other  half,  and  there  is  no 
place  where  they  can  find  it.  Ladies'  society  is 


180  The  Evening  Call.  [xn 

very  difficult  to  be  had,  because  families  are  at 
their  pleasant  and  leisurely  dinners.  There  may 
be,  here  and  there,  people  you  may  run  in  upon  ; 
but  the  universal  opening  of  doors,  which  takes 
place  from  eight  to  nine  in  American  towns,  is 
quite  unknown.  The  British  bachelor,  therefore, 
as  he  rises  from  his  dinner  at  the  club,  is  an  object 
of  commiseration.  What  is  he  to  do  till  bed-time  ? 
He  may  have  a  rubber  of  whist  in  the  card-room, 
but  that  is  expensive.  He  may  go  to  the  theatre, 
but  the  play  is  not  always  good ;  and,  if  it  were, 
he  does  not  want  the  play  every  night,  any  more 
than  waffles  every  morning.  If  he  has  force  and 
restlessness,  he  is  driven  to  all  sorts  of  shifts  to 
amuse  himself.  I  knew  one  young  gentleman  whose 
post-prandial  diversion  it  was  to  rush  off  to  ride  to 
fires  on  a  steam-engine,  and  blow  the  trumpet. 
But  for  men  gifted  with  less  energy  than  this 
individual  possessed,  the  last  resort  (sometimes  we 
fear  the  first)  is  the  society  of  the  ladies  who 
frequent  the  Argyll  and  the  Alhambra.  Many  of 
those  gentlemen,  very  likely,  do  not  feel  their 
privations.  Most  men  about  town  in  London 
might  think  the  way  of  spending  the  evening  in 


xii.]  The  Evening  Call.  181 

vogue  among  us  exceedingly  slow.  But  the 
vitiated  taste  is  the  result  of  the  evil  experience. 
Had  they  possessed  our  opportunities  from  youth 
they  might  have  thought  differently. 

But  those  fortunate  people,  whom  fate  has  not 
compelled  to  toil,  are  comparatively  rare  with  us. 
After  a  hard  day's  work,  it  must  be  a  very  ener- 
getic man  who  cares  to  ride  to  fires  on  an  engine 
and  blow  the  trumpet ;  and  for  men  who  labour 
in  the  daytime,  no  conceivable  relaxation,  as  a 
stand-by  or  staple,  could  be  better  than  the  evening 
call.  It  is  fortunate  that  this  very  good  thing, 
unlike  most  other  good  things,  is  easy  to  be  had. 
Almost  any  young*man,  coming  as  a  stranger  into 
an  American  community,  may  at  once  secure  the 
society  of  good  and  kind  women.  Of  course,  in 
any  city,  and  almost  in  any  village,  there  are 
people  whom  the  young  stranger  will  find  it 
difficult  to  know.  But  there  are  plenty  whom  lie 
may  know  easily,  and  who  are  quite  as  good. 
There  will  always  be  some  who  think  they  have 
friends  enough,  and  there  will  be  others  who  hold 
notions  of  chaperonage  and  surveillance,  but  the 
tide  of  democracy  makes  very  little  of  these  things. 


1 82  The  Evening  Call.  [XIL 

The  young  man  will  find  friends  somewhere  to  his 
mind,  and  such  friends  will  usually  be  feminine,  the 
indispensable  quality  men  ask  in  their  acquaint- 
ance. We  say  then  that  the  stranger  will  find 
women  who  will  like  him,  and  they  will  be  better 
than  he  deserves  to  know ;  for  in  this  country 
women  are  very  equal  in  education  ;  the  difference 
in  mental  and  social  culture  between  classes  is 
mainly  seen  in  the  men.  It  appals  Europeans 
to  hear  of  the  readiness  with  which  strangers  are 
received  into  American  homes.  But  before  we 
censure  our  way  of  doing,  we  have  to  consider 
two  points.  Is  it  good  for  the  young  men,  and  is  it 
bad  for  the  families  into  which  they  are  admitted  ? 
The  advantage  to  any  friendless  young  stranger  is 
indisputable.  A  merchant  in  St.  Louis  has  told 
me  how,  when  a  boy,  he  left  his  New  Jersey  home 
for  the  western  town,  which  was  then  a  week's 
journey  off.  The  very  evening  of  the  day  on  which 
he  reached  St.  Louis,  by  good  luck  he  found  his 
way  to  a  parlour  where  there  were  an  old  piano 
and  some  young  ladies,  and  these  young  ladies 
sang  him  "  'Way  down  upon  the  Swanee  River." 
The  lad  was  but  seventeen  when,  to  seek  his  home 


xii.]  The  Evening  Call.  183 

and  future,  he  stepped  down  into  the  cold  current 
of  that  dreary  stream.  He  says  that  the  song,  and 
the  kindness  of  the  girls,  warmed  his  chilled  breast 
as  with  a  cordial.  We  do  not  think  that  families 
have  very  much  to  fear  from  a  very  liberal  opening 
of  doors  to  strangers.  There  are  dangers  in  our 
society,  but  things  would  not  be  helped  by  a  more 
rigorous  examination  of  candidates  for  admission. 
The  probability  is  that  if  you  do  not  like  the 
candidate  he  will  not  like  you,  and  will  take  him- 
self off  before  he  can  do  you  any  harm.  It  is 
quite  as  safe  to  trust  a  countenance  as  the  word  of 
an  introducer,  though  it  is  well  to  have  both.  The 
introducer  is  liable  to  mistake.  Moreover,  you 
have  no  security  that  the  boy  who  grows  up  in 
the  next  garden  to  your  own  may  not  turn  out  a 
knave.  We  cannot  but  regret  any  movement  that 
tends  to  narrow  the  possibilities  of  intercourse. 
Unluckily,  it  is  our  doom  to  know  too  few  of  the 
admirable  people  who  exist. 

Society,  as  seen  in  the  parlour  of  an  American 
house  by  the  evening  caller,  is  the  social  unit  or 
plenum — small  enough  to  permit  him  to  be  a  part 
of  it  if  he  chooses,  and  so  large  that  he  may  treat  it 


184  The  Evening  Call.  [xn. 

as  a  spectacle  without  being  accused  of  staring. 
It  suits  everybody,  from  the  plainest  youth  with 
the  common  gregarious  instinct  to  the  more  con- 
ceited person  who  looks  on  and  admires.  I  believe 
this  simple  institution  is  one  of  the  best  possible 
tests  of  the  moral  health  of  any  epoch  of  one's  life. 
There  are  two  such  gauges.  If  our  minds  are  not 
open  to  nature,  if  it  bores  us  to  sit  upon  a  fence 
and  look  over  a  darkling  country  for  an  hour  after 
sunset  (providing,  of  course,  we  have  ever  iiked 
that  sort  of  thing),  we  may  think  that  something  is 
the  matter.  This  is  a  negative  way  of  getting  at 
the  truth.  But  in  the  presence  of  the  pure  and 
beautiful  our  decadence  is  shown  us  plainly  and 
unequivocally.  Take  the  parlour  of  some  house- 
hold where  goodness  and  refinement  are  the  family 
dower,  and  the  voices  of  shame  and  strife  come 
from  the  outside  muffled  through  its  windows  and 
walls.  The  mother  is  there,  and  she  may  remain 
if  she  choses.  The  abolition  of  chaperonage  has 
robbed  her  of  her  terrors.  If  she  has  kindness,  or 
authority,  or  benignity,  or  any  other  beauty,  we  con- 
sider her  an  acquisition.  A  father  or  brother  is  not 
in  the  way.  Then  the  daughters  and  sisters,  or  the 


xii.]  The  Evening  Call.  185 

cousins  who  are  visiting,  sing,  or  crochet,  or  talk, 
or  sit  silent — it  makes  little  difference  which ;  for, 
if  they  have  grace  and  innocence,  we  defy  them  to 
move  an  arm,  or  thread  a  needle,  or  walk  the 
length  of  the  room,  without  expressing  it.  There, 
in  the  deep  and  tranquil  scene  before  us,  we  see 
written  those  stories  of  truth  and  purity  that 
happily  we  may  so  often  read  in  the  broad  pages 
of  the  book  of  human  life.  In  such  hours  elevation 
and  sensibility  come  of  course.  How  grateful  we 
are  for  whatever  virtue  we  possess,  how  glad  of 
past  self-denial!  But  if  the  late  months  contain 
an  ugly  recollection,  how  darkly  it  smites  us  that 
the  truth  cannot  be  told  in  this  fair  company. 


Oiir  Latest  Notions  of  Republics. 


THERE  is  something  to  me  indescribably  moving 
in  the  attitude  of  sympathy,  yet  of  separation, 
which  this  country  held  towards  Europe  for  the 
first  third  of  the  present  century.  That  con- 
tinent was  so  far  away  we  scarcely  believed  it  to 
exist ;  yet  in  our  remote  happiness  and  security 
we  were  unable  for  an  hour  to  avert  our  eyes  from 
the  drama  of  human  fate  enacted  within  its  cities 
and  upon  its  plains.  We  later  Americans  can 
scarcely  understand  the  wonder  and  attention 
with  which  the  citizens  of  our  earlier  republic 
looked  upon  Europe.  When  the  young  ladies  of 
that  period  gathered  to  tea-parties  in  my  own 
native  village,  it  was  under  the  very  shadow  of 
the  stone  tower  of  the  church  where  were  said  the 
longest  prayers  in  all  Virginia,  that  they  thumbed 


XIIL]     Oiir  Latest  Notions  of  Republics.      187 

albums  containing  pictures  of  Haidee  and  the 
Maid  of  Athens ;  and  who  was  it  but  Byron,  the 
libertine  and  sceptic,  that  they  held  in  their  dear 
little  Presbyterian  hearts  ?  My  mother,  in  that 
mountain  home,  sang  of  the  loves  of  Josephine 
and  Napoleon,  or  thrummed  upon  the  old  piano 
to  the  humming-bird  in  the  honeysuckle  vine, 
the  "  Downfall  of  Paris."  Thus  did  our  early 
republic,  nestling  along  the  edge  of  the  great 
unknown  continent,  hear  the  echoes  of  Europe. 
Each  wind  that  swept  the  sun-washed  sea  brought 
tidings  from  the  land  of  passion,  and  feud,  and 
discord,  and  ambition.  Armies  met  and  perished. 
Patriots  languished  in  prisons  and  expired  upon 
scaffolds.  But  no  blight  reached  those  happy 
homes,  only  pity  and  enthusiasm.  No  rumour 
stirred  for  an  hour  the  trance  of  our  summer  land- 
scape. The  mountains  yet  stood  silent ;  the  spires 
lingered  in  the  virgin  air ;  still  the  wave  of  the 
ocean  lapped  the  long  glistening  line  of  sand  that 
rimmed  our  Atlantic  border. 

Our  early  attitude  towards  Europe  was  one 
of  separation.  We  admired  Europe  far  more 
than  we  do  at  present,  yet  at  the  same  time  we 


1 88      Our  Latest  Notions  of  Republics,     [xm. 

were  much  farther  away  than  now.  We  looked 
on  with  wonder  and  sympathy,  and  yet  all  the 
while  prayed  to  be  delivered  from  temptation. 
Unable  to  take  away  our  eyes,  we  crossed  our- 
selves. Mirabeau  wrote  a  pamphlet  in  which  he 
warned  us  that  in  the  Cincinnati  Society  (which 
association,  I  believe,  continues  annually  to  eat  a 
dinner  somewhere)  we  held  the  germ  of  an  aris- 
tocracy; and  Virginia,  with  the  charming  simplicity 
of  the  time,  refused  to  retain  a  chapter  for  this 
very  reason.  If  you  had  told  a  patriot  of  that  day 
that  his  dream  of  a  republic  would  be  one  easy 
enough  of  accomplishment,  that  in  fact  it  would 
be  no  such  great  thing  when  attained,  that  kings 
and  lords  were  the  simplest  and  most  easily 
mastered  of  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  human 
progress,  that  a  state  of  society  in  which  the 
humblest  citizen  could  be  elected  to  office  might 
be  a  very  immature  one,  you  would  have  nearly 
broken  his  heart. 

The  passion  for  the  spread  of  political  liberty, 
so  familiar  to  all  cultivated  and  generous  minds 
during  the  first  half  of  the  present  century,  has 
diminished  very  noticeably  of  late.  Hardly  a  ves- 


XIIL]     Our  Latest  Notions  of  Republics.      189 

tige  remains  of  that  enthusiastic  sympathy  which 
the  people  of  that  day  gave  to  Greece  and  Poland. 
It  is  but  twenty  years  since  Kossuth,  it  is  but  ten 
since  Garibaldi  and  the  impulse  of  Italian  unity. 
So  that  only  in  the  last  decade  of  years  has  the 
change  of  which  we  speak  come  over  society.  In 
Europe  the  phenomenon  may  be  in  part  explained 
by  the  great  interest  the  common  people  have 
taken  in  social  questions.  But  in  this  country 
there  has  been  much  less  interest  in  social  ques- 
tions, and  we  must  look  for  some  other  explana- 
tion of  our  apathy  toward  the  spread  of  repub- 
licanism abroad,  and  of  our  want  of  enthusiasm 
and  exultation  over  its  indisputable  establishment 
at  home.  I  think  that  the  decline  of  our  aspira- 
tion for  the  spread  and  establishment  of  repub- 
licanism is  the  result,  first,  of  the  sense  of  the 
fulfilment  of  that  aspiration,  and,  secondly,  of  the 
fact  that  we  had  greatly  over-estimated  both  the 
difficulty  and  the  importance  of  the  task.  America, 
with  whose  movements  Europe  has  always  so 
strongly  sympathised,  has  had  several  kinds  of 
patriots.  The  patriot  of  the  years  following  our 
revolution  was  of  a  far  more  ardent  and  interest- 


190     Our  Latest  Notions  of  Republics,     [xm. 

ing  type  than  his  successor  of  the  present  day. 
His  task  was  almost  as  new  as  that  of  Columbus. 
The  world  applauded,  and  admired,  but  doubted, 
and  it  would  have  been  strange  had  he  not  felt 
the  contagion  of  its  disbelief.  He  believed,  but  be- 
lieved with  fear  and  trembling.  He  was  full  of  fore- 
bodings and  warnings  as  to  the  fate  of  our  liberties, 
had  the  lessons  of  Greece  and  Rome  continually 
on  his  lips,  and  attached  a  superstitious  value  to 
Washington's  dying  utterances.  The  early  patriot 
adored  liberty,  but  with  the  ardour  of  the  lover 
for  his  almost  unattainable  mistress.  The  patriot 
of  the  present  has  taken  her,  not  for  his  sweetheart, 
but  for  his  comely  and  contented  bride.  Comfort- 
ably he  sits  in  dressing-gown  and  slippers,  and, 
without  surprise  or  exultation,  sees  her  who  was 
once  his  morning  star  tripping  about  his  apart- 
ment, hanging  ornaments  on  the  bare  walls,  dust- 
ing away  the  cobwebs,  and  putting  to  rights  on 
doorstep  and  window-sill  some  disorderly  things 
which  have  long  been  a  scandal  and  a  reproach  in 
the  eyes  of  certain  aristocratic  old  maids  over  the 
other  way.  Indeed,  one  might  say  that  the  patriot 
of  the  present  finds  his  vocation  a  dull  one.  With 


xm.]     Our  Latest  Notions  of  Republics.      191 

human  ingratitude  and  obliviousness,  he  hardly 
understands  that  he  is  a  very  happy  man.  If  you 
tell  him  he  is  fortunate  in  his  freedom  from  royalty 
and  hereditary  aristocracy,  he  is  rather  surprised. 
It  is  much  as  if  the  Swiss  should  congratulate  him 
on  not  having  the  goitre.  Really  that  is  one  of 
the  things  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  to  be 
thankful  for.  The  American  patriot  of  ten  or 
fifteen  years  ago  was  also  a  person  of  more  vigour 
and  enthusiasm  than  the  man  of  to-day.  Politics 
is  with  us  a  far  less  ardent  and  attractive  field  now 
than  then.  It  lacks,  at  present,  the  inspiration  of 
opposition  to  slavery.  We  all  felt  before  the  war 
(those  of  us  who  dared  dream  of  such  an  event) 
that  the  abolition  of  slavery  would  make  the 
country  happy  and  perfect.  And  during  the  war, 
how  looked  then,  in  the  future,  the  vine  and  fig- 
tree  under  which  the  victors  should  one  day  cool 
themselves  !  How  we  heard  the  distant  church 
bells  ringing,  and  saw  far  away  the  piping  times 
of  peace,  and  the  wide,  brooding  land  grown 
happier  for  ever. 

It  has  all  come  to  pass.     Our  dreams  have  been 
more  than  fulfilled.     We  are  rich   and  free,   and 


1 92      Our  Latest  Notions  of  Republics,     [xiu. 

wield  a  silent  influence  such  as  perhaps  no  other 
country  wields.  But  we  have  attained  to  this 
only  to  find  ourselves  much  duller,  and  no  nearer 
perfection  than  before,  and  to  again  confront  tasks 
of  Herculean  difficulty.  In  our  pursuit  of  principles 
which  are  new  and  true,  we  had  forgotten  some 
that  are  old  and  equally  true.  We  now  call  to 
mind  that  no  State  can  be  happy  in  which  there 
are  not  wise  and  good  men  to  direct  and  teach, 
and  in  which  other  men  are  not  willing  to  learn. 
We  have  entire  confidence  in  our  republican  suc- 
cess, and  we  know  that,  great  as  our  difficulties 
are,  kings  and  lords  cannot  help  us.  It  will  come 
right  in  the  end,  we  are  sure,  with  higher  and 
wider  education,  and  that  recognised  supremacy 
of  an  educated  class  which  we  once  had,  but 
which  we  threw  away.  But  our  task  is  so  grave 
that  we  have  little  time  or  inclination  for  sympathy 
with  the  impatience  of  otner  countries. 


English  Conservative  Temper. 


THE  English  Conservatives  have  rather  a  temper 
than  a  policy.  In  describing  a  Conservative,  there- 
fore, it  is  far  more  important  to  observe  him  than 
to  attempt  a  diagnosis  of  his  opinions.  He  is 
the  balky  horse  of  the  team.  And  yet  he  is  the 
balky  horse  in  front  of  a  car  that  must  go  on. 
Rear  and  plunge  as  he'  may,  he  must  get  ahead, 
or  the  single-trees  will  be  upon  his  heels.  The 
hard  pulling  has  always  been  done  by  the  Liberal 
horse,  the  Tory  steed  trotting  on  sullenly  by  his 
side.  As  soon  as  the  Liberal  animal  stumbles  or 
shows  signs  of  fatigue,  the  balky  horse  at  once 
begins  to  plunge  in  the  most  indignant  and  con- 
temptuous manner,  and  to  indicate  to  the  charioteer 
that  if  the  coach  is  to  proceed  that  stupid  beast 
must  be  unhitched.  The  Tory  steed  (which  has 

o 


194       English  Conservative  Temper.        [xiv. 

really  considerable  mettle  and  energy),  finding 
himself  the  sole  reliance  of  the  vehicle,  strains 
forward  with  all  the  strength  he  can  command. 
But  the  poor  beast  is  nearly  exhausted  with  the 
struggle  before  the  car  has  been  got  over  a  few 
feet  of  ground.  The  Liberal  horse  must  be  again 
called  in ;  sullenly  the  unhappy  beast  resumes  his 
reluctant  jog.  But  we  must  not  despise  the  Con- 
servative horse.  He  has  his  uses.  He  is  a  good 
war  horse.  When  the  car  of  state  becomes  an 
artilleryman's  carriage,  he  rattles  it  over  the  stones 
in  fine  style.  To  change  the  figure  somewhat,  he 
is  no  beast  to  carry  on  his  back  a  tax-gatherer  or 
an  educational  reformer,  or  social  philosopher 
who  turns  his  toes  out.  But  when  a  soldier  gets 
astride  of  him  he  becomes  a  serviceable  animal. 

The  Conservative  party  in  England  has  always 
been  the  party  of  objection  and  the  party  of 
defeat.  It  has  its  important  uses.  It  teaches 
caution  to  those  whom  too  much  success  would 
render  over  confident.  The  flippancy,  the  jaunt- 
ing, joking  tone  of  men  who  think  it  scarcely 
worth  while  that  they  should  condescend  to  be 
serious — that  tone  into  which  the  successful  majority 


xrv.]       English  Conservative  Temper.        195 

in  our  own  civil  struggle  fell  after  the  war  was 
over — an  English  party  is  rarely  allowed  to  reach. 
The  evil  to  which  men  are  prone  as  the  sparks 
fly  upward  is  much  too  inevitable  a  matter  to 
permit  the  Conservative  function  to  become  an 
obsolete  one.  It  guards  a  wise  and  good  impulse 
from  the  old  age  of  Solomon.  The  Conservative 
party  has,  moreover,  accidental  allies  in  the  caprice 
of  the  people,  in  all  sorts  of  rumours  and  humours. 
There  was  evident  in  the  recent  crisis  an  irritable, 
wilful  disposition  for  change,  as  if  the  people  were 
tired  of  looking  at  Gladstone.  They  were  like 
untutored  listeners  at  a  concert  of  classical  music  ; 
they  enjoyed  none  of  it,  but  when  the  orchestra 
was  playing  they  wished  it  was  time  for  the  sing- 
ing, and  when  the  prima  donna  was  at  her  solo 
they  wanted  the  riddles  to  begin  again.  But  the 
Conservative  party  must  always  be  beaten.  The 
idea  of  reform  has  taken  a  permanent  hold  of  the 
English  mind.  All  parties  agree  that  progress  is 
the  principle  of  government.  The  rankest  Tory 
in  England  holds  that  freedom  should  broaden 
slowly  down  from  precedent  to  precedent.  He 
only  sticks  at  the  particular  reform.  Reform  is 


196       English  Conservative  Temper.       [xiv. 

a  good  thing:  but  he  thinks  that  you  must  not 
increase  the  suffrage,  and  you  must  not  have  the 
ballot,  and  you  must  not  disestablish  the  Irish 
church.  In  a  word,  the  Conservative  party  must 
always  have  a  policy  at  war  with  the  necessary 
and  inevitable  principle  in  the  life  of  the  state. 


English   and  American 
Newspaper-writing. 


THE  decorum  which  is  characteristic  of  English 
papers  of  the  best  class  resides  not  so  much  in 
the  men  who  conduct  them  as  in  the  audience  to 
which  they  are  addressed.  Were  not  such  deco- 
rum required  from  the  outside,  persons  without 
education  and  breeding  would  be  sure,  sooner  or 
later,  to  begin  to  write  in  papers  ;  indeed,  educated 
and  well-bred  men  would  soon  cease  to  write 
without  decorum.  It  must  be  a  man  of  uncommon 
virtue  and  strength  of  judgment,  who  will  write 
in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  good  sense 
and  good  taste,  unless  those  principles  are  pretty 
well  defined  by  society.  What  may  and  what 
may  not  be  said  are  pretty  well  understood  by 


198  English  and  American  [xv. 

writers  in  England.  The  feeling  of  the  limits  put 
upon  them  checks  many  a  low  impulse,  dilutes  the 
gall  dripping  from  many  a  pen  ;  while  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  critical  audience  represses  the 
gush,  folly,  and  pretence  which  impose  upon  the 
ignorant.  The  best  papers  of  England  are  read 
by  tradesmen,  and  perhaps  by  mechanics.  But  it 
is  not  the  tradesmen  and  mechanics  who  compel 
the  papers  to  take  their  sensible  and  decorous 
tone.  The  barristers,  the  clergy,  and  the  educated 
men  in  general  of  England  do  this,  and  the  mer- 
chants and  mechanics  acquiesce.  The  English 
have  a  larger  class  than  we  of  men  who  ask  of 
any  proposition  or  measure  if  it  be  true  or  right, 
rather  than  if  it  be  useful.  Here,  one  is  more 
apt  to  belong  to  a  clique,  or  to  have  an  axe  to 
grind,  or  to  have  interests  other  than  those  of 
opinion  in  the  matter.  Interested  criticism,  indeed, 
is  that  heard  everywhere  most  commonly  ;  but  it  is 
still  true  that  the  number  of  men  who  care  for 
truth  and  justice,  simply  as  truth  and  justice,  is 
smaller  here  than  in  England.  An  educated 
Englishman,  in  expressing  his  opinion  upon  a 
question  which  concerns  his  country  and  another 


xv.]  Newspaper-writing.  199 

country,  will  usually  profess  to  exclude  the  con- 
sideration that  England  is  his  country.  I  say 
"profess;"  of  course,  he  will  not  always — perhaps, 
not  often — do  it,  but  an  American  will  scarcely 
profess  to  ignore  his  interest  in  the  matter.  This 
is  largely  because  higher  education  is  more  diffused 
in  England  than  here.  Then  it  is  true  that  edu- 
cation necessitates  a  certain  degree  of  honesty. 
Even  if  the  conscience  of  an  educated  and  able  man 
does  not  make  him  truthful,  the  clearness  of  his 
perceptions  will  often  render  it  difficult  for  him  to 
be  false.  One  evening,  sitting  in  the  gallery  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  I  heard  a  striking  example  of 
that  candour  in  which  educated  men  delight.  An 
opponent  of  the  Government  was  upon  the  floor. 
He  was  upbraiding  the  ministry  for  selling  arms 
just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
war,  at  which  event,  he  averred,  nobody  was  or 
could  have  been  surprised.  This  was  a  round- 
about way  of  intimating  that  he  was  not  surprised, 
and  that  he  was  a  person  of  some  foresight.  Mr. 
Lowe  rose,  and  before  proceeding  to  the  matter  of 
the  speech,  dismissed  the  orator  as  follows  :  "  Mr. 
Speaker,  the  only  criticism  I  have  to  make  upon 


2OO  English  and  American  [xv. 

the  gentleman  is,  that  he  expects  everybody  to  be 
as  clever  as  himself.  Because  he  descried  in  the 
future  the  terrible  war  that  has  ravaged  Europe, 
saw  Metz,  saw  Sedan,  the  capitulation  of  the 
emperor,  the  fall  of  Paris,  the  Commune,  and  all 
the  rest  of  it,  he  thinks  that  I  should  have  seen 
all  this  too.  Now,  in  all  humility,  I  assure  him 
that  I  never  expected  anything  of  the  sort.  Mr. 
Speaker,  the  whole  thing  has  been  a  complete 
surprise  to  me."  The  wit  and  truth  of  this  were 
irresistible. 

Of  course,  there  is  wonderfully  little  stuff  in  the 
usual  editorial  page  of  the  usual  high-class  English 
paper.  For  that  matter,  it  is  inevitable  that  there 
shall  be  very  little  stuff  in  the  editorial  page  of 
almost  any  paper.  The  writing  about  this  country 
is  very  poor :  it  is  not,  as  a  usual  thing,  hostile  or 
spiteful ;  it  is  rather  feeble  and  inaccurate.  The 
best  writers,  those  most  ambitious  really  to  com- 
prehend the  country,  shoot  wide  of  the  mark.  In 
one  way  they  have  studied  us  pretty  well.  They 
have  read  the  "  Federalist,"  Madison's  papers,  &c., 
and  have  quite  a  notion  of  State's  rights  and  the 
Monroe  doctrine.  But  of  the  moods  of  the  country 


xv.]  Newspaper -writing.  201 

and  its  physiognomy,  of  our  public  opinion  and  its 
factors,  they  know  little,  and,  as  a  rule,  write  ill.  A 
man  born  and  reared  here,  and  accustomed  to  think 
about  his  country,  will  detect  constant  little  diver- 
gencies from  the  truth.  The  pen  of  the  writer  is 
incessantly  glancing  from  reality,  by  spaces  which 
it  would  be  difficult  to  define,  and  yet  of  which  it 
is  impossible  not  to  be  conscious.  Sometimes  we 
are  treated  to  columns  of  pure  guessing.  But  the 
mass  of  English  writing  about  America  we  should 
describe  rather  as  the  "  wishy-washy  compli- 
mentary." The  chief  editor  of  a  journal  says, 
"America  is  a  great  country,  and  she  must  have 
to-day  a  portion  of  our  space."  Accordingly,  some 
young  gentleman  is  selected  to  maunder  down  a 
column  of  loose,  uncertain  comment,  which  is  not 
to  offend  the  Americans,  who  are  touchy,  nor  to 
tell  the  truth  of  them,  of  which  last  article  they  are 
in  possession  of  very  little. 

But  when  we  turn  to  our  own  papers,  we  find 
the  editorial  articles  feebler  than  the  English  ones ; 
while  the  propriety,  scholar-like  manner,  and  sem- 
blance of  fairness  of  the  English  press  are  gene- 
rally wanting,  And  here  I  have  an  opportunity  to 


2O2  English  and  American  [xv. 

speak  of  the  affectation  and  insincerity  so  com- 
mon in  American  editorial  writing. 

An  editorial  should  be  written  to  inform  the 
people  concerning  some  question  of  the  day,  or 
to  counsel  the  public  as  to  the  course  to  be  pursued 
concerning  it.  A  newspaper  writer  should  speak 
as  if  he  were  in  a  deliberative  assembly,  and  the 
question  under  discussion  were  to  be  voted  upon. 
How  often  does  he  so  speak  ?  Read  through  the 
usual  editorial,  and  ask  yourself,  "  Now  what  shall 
I  do  ? "  You  find  that  you  are  as  much  in  the 
dark  as  ever.  Suppose  the  Modoc  war  is  to  be 
written  upon.  The  gentleman  or  lady  sits  down 
to  the  task,  talks  in  a  most  superior  manner,  and 
earns  his  or  her  ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  dollars  a 
column,  whatever  it  may  be,  to  the  entire  satisfac- 
tion of  the  managers  of  the  paper.  But  now  take 
the  article  to  the  Government  authorities,  and  let 
them  educe  a  policy  from  it.  The  public  func- 
tionary must  read  a  long  time  before  he  will  dis- 
cern whether  or  no  he  is  to  hang  Captain  Jack ; 
whether,  indeed,  he  is  to  do  or  to  refrain  from 
doing  anything  in  particular. 

It  is   the   faith   of  many   newspapers   that   the 


xv.]  Newspaper-writing  203 

people  do  not  like  sense  and  information ;  that 
they  prefer  nonsense  or  commonplace  which  has 
the  appearance  of  originality.  Now  I  think  that  the 
"  average  man  "  is  very  well  contented  with  either. 
He  likes  sense  and  information,  if  they  are  not 
put  in  such  a  way  as  to  tire  or  shock  him.  He 
is  willing  enough  to  put  up  with  commonplace 
which  imitates  originality,  for  he  finds  nothing  to 
object  to  in  the  commonplaces,  and  he  has  not 
sufficient  confidence  in  his  own  judgment  to 
detect  the  counterfeit  originality.  But  it  is  a 
mistake  to  imagine  that  there  is  always  a  popular 
demand  for  any  foolish  fashion  of  writing  which 
happens  to  exist.  That  very  lack  of  discrimina- 
tion which  marks  the  uneducated  man  renders  him 
quite  as  ready  to  accept  sense  as  nonsense.  But 
as  nonsense  only  is  given  him,  he  accepts  non- 
sense. Who  is  he  that  he  should  set  up  his  opinion 
against  persons  who  express  themselves  in  such 
fine  and  confident  words,  whose  sentences  are 
printed  in  such  elegant  type,  in  papers  sold  at 
such  grand  hotels,  and  scattered  by  the  thousand 
in  such  great  cities  ?  What  is  known  as  a  popular 
demand  might  be  more  accurately  described  as 


204  English  and  American  [xr. 

a  popular  acquiescence.  It  seems  very  formidable 
when  we  think  of  the  immense  number  of  persons 
who  form  it;  but  then  it  is  only  skin  deep.  In- 
stead of  a  popular  state  of  mind  being,  as  we 
are  apt  to  think  it,  a  recondite  and  almost  inscrut- 
able matter,  it  is  oftener  the  result  of  an  obvious 
and  even  contemptible  cause.  Instead  of  there 
being  a  deep-seated  and  characteristic  taste  with 
which  public  caterers  must  comply,  the  fashion  is 
often  given  the  people  from  above.  After  the 
fashion  is  fixed,  men  write  in  accordance  with  it, 
and  explain  its  existence  by  the  fiction  of  a 
demand.  The  qualities  at  which  editorial  writers 
may  aim  are  sense,  thoroughness,  and  good  taste. 
Now  and  then  they  may  be  eloquent,  and  now 
and  then  they  may  be  witty.  But  wit  and 
eloquence  must  be  the  incidents,  and  not  the 
staple,  of  an  editor's  work.  If  we  try  to  have 
it  otherwise,  at  the  best  we  can  only  have  sham 
wit  and  sham  eloquence,  which  are  not  only  false, 
hurtful  to  the  writer  and  hurtful  to  the  reader, 
but  must  be  quite  as  tiresome  as  honest  common- 
places. 

It   is   natural   that  an   editor   should   be    more 


xv.]  Newspaper-writing.  205 

anxious  that  his  M>our  appear  good  than  be  good. 
He  has  special  temptations  to  this  sort  of  work. 
He  is  paid  less  for  the  inherent  than  for  the 
apparent  value  of  his  contributions.  A  lawyer's 
work  is  good  when  he  wins  his  case,  a  doctor's 
when  he  cures  his  patient ;  but  there  is  no  such 
test  for  the  work  of  an  editor.  "  Do  people  like 
to  read  it?"  is  the  ultimate  question;  and  what 
people  like  to  read  cannot  easily  be  known  with 
certainty.  As  we  are  confident,  however,  that 
sense  and  thoroughness  must  be  acknowledged, 
we  marvel  that  writers  are  not  more  willing  to 
rely  upon  honest  work  and  to  be  content  with 
it.  But  that  is  the  last  thing  they  are  willing 
to  rely  upon.  They  must  have  an  out-of-the-way 
title.  They  must  torture  the  jaded  humour  into 
some  feverish  antics.  They  must  put  their  trust 
in  affected  wisdom  and  affected  fine  moral  senti- 
ments. One  peculiarity  of  their  way  of  writing 
is  a  certain  tone  of  infinite  knowingness.  A  fact 
is  told  you,  but  it  is  parenthetically  insinuated 
that  the  writer's  general  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject is  simply  boundless.  Is  he  to  write  upon 
the  Eastern  question,  and  has  he  heard  for  the 


206  English  and  American  [xv. 

first  time  of  General  Ignatieff,  he  begins  as  follows  : 
"Well,  in  spite  of  the  wily  Russian  who  repre- 
sents the  Czar  in  Constantinople,"  &c.  Very  few 
of  the  English  papers,  except  the  vulgarest,  exhibit 
this  peculiar  form  of  nonsense  in  their  treatment 
of  questions  of  politics  ;  but  the  best  papers  occa- 
sionally do  something  very  like  it  in  their  criticisms 
of  art  and  literature.  The  imitators  of  these  critics 
in  this  country  are,  however,  quite  even  with  them. 
A  friend  of  mine,  who  is  an  editor,  sent  me  a  book 
of  poems  to  review,  with  the  request  that  I  should 
make  the  article  "dignified."  I  knew  very  well 
what  he  meant  by  this  prescription.  I  was  to  talk 
as  if  I  were  not  only  familiar  with  the  subject  in 
hand,  but  with  pretty  much  every  other.  I  was 
to  be  very  confident ;  here  and  there  derisive,  here 
and  there  ecstatic,  but  always  absolute ;  and  each 
paragraph,  as  I  left  it,  was  to  stand  up  and  quiver 
with  a  gelatinous  consistency,  galvanised  by  the 
energy  of  my  mind  and  hand. 

One  would  naturally  wish  to  speak  only  when 
one  can  speak  strongly,  and  with  precision  and 
certainty.  The  seemly  man  is  he  who  is  silent 
when  his  thought  is  immature.  He  is  not  likely 


xv.]  Nezvspaper-writing.  207 

to  offend  his  own  self-esteem,  nor  to  lower  him- 
self in  the  opinion  of  the  clear-sighted.  But  the 
seemly  silent  man  and  the  unseemly  speaker 
are  alike  immature.  We  merely  see  the  one  state 
of  mind,  while  we  do  not  see  the  other.  One 
confesses  the  mental  condition,  which  the  other 
equally  possesses.  So  long  as  the  speaker  does 
not  lay  claim  to  a  certainty  which  he  has  not, 
he  is  really  as  good  a  man,  and,  if  not  so  seemly, 
as  dignified  as  the  other.  It  is  one's  duty  at 
times  to  write  ill.  A  newspaper  contributor  must 
constantly  write  upon  subjects  of  which  his  know- 
ledge is  imperfect,  and  of  which  his  opinion  is 
immature.  It  cannot  be  otherwise.  And  why 
should  writers  wish  to  make  it  appear  otherwise  ? 
You  consult  a  paper  with  the  same  intent  with 
which  you  ask  the  opinion  of  an  intelligent  friend. 
You  do  not  wish  your  wiser  friend  to  decide  the 
matter  for  you ;  you  ask  him  to  throw  light  upon 
it.  If  he  has  no  definite  opinion  to  give  you, 
you  wish  the  stimulus  of  a  common  sympathy 
and  a  common  curiosity.  You  ask  the  same 
of  a  newspaper.  The  writer  need  not  be  omnis- 
cient ;  if  he  be  eager  and  interested  the  reader 


208  English  and  American  Newspapers,    [xv. 

will  be  eager  and  interested.  The  disposition  in 
newspapers  to  appear  wiser  than  they  are  is 
therefore  not  only  immoral,  but,  I  believe,  inex- 
pedient 


Americans   Abroad. 


MANY  sorts  of  Americans  are  to  be  seen  in  Europe. 
There  are  those  who  live  there  and  have  a  hold 
upon  society.  These  are  the  privileged  few;  and 
some  of  them  are  very  nice  people  and  do  us 
credit.  But  even  these  are  not  quite  so  nice 
and  certainly  not  so  useful  and  considerable  as 
if  they  lived  at  home.  For  a  foreigner  is  always 
at  a  disadvantage.  He  is  tied  to  the  country  in 
which  he  is  resident  neither  by  his  past  nor  by 
his  future,  and  is  therefore  not  important  to  it 
Even  an  eminent  foreigner  cannot  hold  abroad  the 
place  he  has  at  home.  He  has  done  something  in 
his  own  country,  and  is  of  some  value  there ;  he 
will  be  apt  to  be  of  very  little  value  elsewhere.  So 
that  it  is  certainly  true  that  a  man  loses  in  social 
density  by  having  his  residence  in  a  land  other 


2io  Americans  Abroad.  [xvi. 

than  his  own.  Men  who  desire  achievement  and 
consideration  should  live  at  home.  No  country, 
not  even  our  own,  is  hospitable  to  foreigners  as 
such ;  our  ladies  are  glad  enough  to  have  a  count 
at  their  houses,  but  I  never  hear  that  they  put 
themselves  to  much  trouble  to  seek  out  young 
strangers  who  are  over  here  making  their  way. 

But  there  are  certain  other  Americans  (and  this 
class  is  much  larger  than  the  foregoing)  who  count 
upon  their  ringers  the  grafs  and  princes  they  know. 
They  are  vefy  unhappy  people.  Their  unhappi- 
ness  does  not  consist  in  the  illusive  and  unsatis- 
factory nature  of  the  phantoms  they  pursue  so 
much  as  in  the  agonising  self-inquiry  of  which 
they  are  the  subjects.  They  never  cease  to 
interrogate  themselves  with  one  form  of  ancient 
question,  "What  am  I?"  They  ask  not  "Am 
I  virtuous?"  "Am  I  right?"  but  "Am  I  genteel?" 
"  Do  I  possess  that  peculiar  constitution  of  mind 
which,  in  the  illustrious  circles  of  the  Old  World, 
makes  me  '  one  of  them  ? ' '  This  question  is  never 
answered.  If  it  were  only  a  tangible  society  the 
inquirer  was  in  search  of,  his  condition  would  not 
be  so  wretched  ;  he  is  condemned,  however,  to 


XVL]  Americans  Abroad.  211 

imitate  the  pursuit  of  the  dog  who  ran  round  after 
his  own  tail.  Alas,  if  men  could  but  devote  to 
the  pursuit  of  goodness  and  knowledge  the  sensi- 
tiveness of  conscience,  the  earnestness,  the  profound 
desire  and  dissatisfaction  with  which  they  ask  to 
be  genteel ! 

Some  thirty  years  ago  the  English  were  the  great 
travellers  of  Europe.  They  overran  the  Continent. 
Many  of  these  tourists  were  of  a  sort  to  make 
Frenchmen  and  Italians  wonder  what  manner  of 
men  the  English  were.  But  the  fact  of  such  people 
getting  abroad  was  altogether  to  the  advantage  of 
the  English.  Persons  of  corresponding  position  on 
the  Continent  would  never  have  got  beyond  their 
own  thresholds.  Of  late  years,  however,  the 
Americans  send  abroad  more  travellers  and 
spend  more  money  in  foreign  lands  than  any 
other  people.  Wealth  having  in  this  country,  far 
more  than  in  England,  lost  significance,  any  sort 
of  people  here  go  abroad.  It  is  greatly  to  the 
credit,  or,  at  least,  to  the  advantage  of  this 
country,  that  such  people  can  prosper  and  be 
happy.  It  is  true,  however,  that  we  have  very 
often  cause  to  be  ashamed  of  our  brethren  in 


212  Americans  Abroad. 

Europe.  Why  is  it  that  Americans  look  so  much 
worse  abroad  than  at  home?  The  truth  is,  I 
suppose,  that  we  see  a  worse  class  than  we  see 
at  home,  or  see  more  of  them,  and  that  we  see 
them  under  circumstances  which  are  not  in  their 
favour. 

As  I  have  before  said,  any  foreigner  is  seen  at  a 
disadvantage  in  a  country  not  his  own.  He  is 
especially  at  a  disadvantage,  if  he  lacks  social 
education.  He  is  amid  circumstances  to  which  he 
is  not  accustomed,  and  if  there  is  any  vulgarity  in 
him  it  is  sure  to  come  out.  Indeed,  if  he  have 
none,  he  is  likely  to  adopt  a  little  for  present  use. 
A  civilised  instinct  is  possibly  the  cause  of  some  of 
his  mistakes.  He  is  alone,  would  like  acquaint- 
ance, and  is  not  judicious  in  his  advances.  There 
are  some  things  which  the  wariest  traveller  will 
have  to  learn.  One  is  that  it  will  not  do  to  be 
candid ;  an  Englishman,  Frenchman,  or  German 
quite  as  much  objects  to  be  told  anything  ill  of  his 
country  as  an  American.  A  foreigner  should 
admire ;  even  guarded  and  discriminating  praise 
from  him  is  not  usually  acceptable.  I  believe 
that  one  other  mistake  with  which  an  American 


xvi.]  Americans  Abroad.  213 

goes  abroad  for  the  first  time  is,  that  because  he 
lives  in  an  important  country  he  is  entitled  to  more 
respect  than  men  who  live  in  smaller  countries  like 
Holland  or  Belgium.  A  little  thought  should  teach 
him  that  this  cannot  be  ;  that  one's  nationality 
must  be,  of  course,  a  very  small  ingredient  among 
the  considerations  that  go  to  make  up  his  pre- 
sentibility.  Is  he  good-looking,  is  he  rich,  well- 
mannered,  amusing,  learned,  clever?  These  are 
the  questions  which  society  asks,  and  not,  "What 
is  his  country  ?"  But  an  American's  chief  danger 
in  Europe  is  that  his  energy  and  want  of  occupation 
may  hurry  him  into  improprieties  and  vulgarities. 
I  know  it  is  true  that  Americans  who  have  lived 
long  about  the  European  capitals,  and  who  have 
nothing  to  do,  are  not  energetic  people.  There  are 
many  of  our  countrymen,  loiterers  in  the  foreign 
cities,  who  have  learned  to  suffer  in  silence  the 
ennui  and  stupefaction  which  idleness  generates. 
Never  having  learned  the  pleasure  of  labour,  and 
fancying  that  they  cannot  work  as  other  men  do, 
they  give  themselves  up  to  an  unhealthful  indo- 
lence, of  which  they  do  not  admit  to  themselves 
even  the  wretchedness.  I  have  seen  a  man  kept 


214  Americans  Abroad.  [xvi. 

out  of  Paris  by  circumstances  he  could  not  control, 
varying  the  monotony  of  existence  in  the  fol- 
lowing manner :  One  day  he  has  his  chop  at 
Simpson's  in  the  Strand,  and  his  supper  at  the 
Pall  Mall  Restaurant ;  the  next  he  has  lunch 
at  the  Rainbow  (calling  for  porter  which  he  does 
not  like,  but  which  he  understands  should  be  had 
at  the  Rainbow)  ;  in  the  evening  he  dines  at  the 
Blue  Post  and  has  whitebait.  So  he  goes  on  from 
day  to  day,  exhausting  one  by  one  the  experiences 
of  the  universe. 

But  the  usual  American  abroad  is  not  this  sort 
of  man,  and  has  temptations  of  a  different  kind. 
The  more  he  is  able  to  rest  the  better  for  him. 
One  danger  is  that  his  impatience  and  activity 
will  carry  him  into  scenes  livelier  than  the  above, 
but  not  so  moral.  Especially  he  should  beware 
of  too  great  a  desire  to  know  the  world  and  to 
"study  society/'  Every  reader  is  familiar  with 
that  strong  feeling  of  obligation  resting  upon 
him  to  acquaint  himself  with  certain  French 
novels  ("an  educated  man  should  know  these 
things")  before  he  has  read  much  more  famous 
works  of  a  less  peculiar  character.  In  the  same 


xvi.]  Americans  Abroad.  215 

way  it  is  surprising  to  find  what  opportunities  for 
the  student  of  man  the  casinos  and  other  places 
of  the  kind  seem  to  afford.  It  is  not  unusual  to 
see  at  the  Argyll,  just  when  the  dancing  is  the 
wildest,  and  the  dull  electricity  in  the  atmosphere 
the  most  palpable,  the  really  honest  traveller  from 
America — a  Sunday-school  teacher,  likely — "sur- 
veying mankind  from  China  to  Peru,"  &c.,  and 
looking  on  with  a  countenance  expressive  of 
edification  and  enlightenment.  I  had  here  better 
amend  a  remark  made  above.  I  spoke  of  the 
innocent  and  dull  delights  of  certain  feeble  idlers. 
I  meant  to  pass  no  encomiums  upon  the  morality 
of  American  idlers  in  Europe.  The  tendency  of 
the  sort  of  life  led  by  these  persons,  especially 
when  unmarried,  is  to  produce  a  certain  type  of 
man  of  which  one  sees  a  great  deal — a  sort  of 
cross  between  a  rout  and  an  old  maid. 

It  is  certainly  true  that  our  people  do  not  look 
to  such  advantage  abroad  as  at  home.  I  presume 
the  reason  of  that  is,  in  part,  that  here  we  form 
intimate  acquaintanceships  with  people  whom  we 
like,  and  these  stand  for  America  to  our  minds 
and  "  wall  us  out "  from  the  inferior  sort  we  meet 


216  Americans  Abroad.  [xvi. 

abroad.  What  a  delight  it  is  for  the  sojourner  m 
a  foreign  land  to  meet  a  really  charming  American 
family,  with  beauty,  sense,  refinement,  and  kind- 
ness !  These  people  are  happy  to  see  the  fine 
things  Europe  has  to  show  them,  and  will  be 
happy,  likewise,  to  go  back  to  the  land  which  their 
absence  has  made  lonely.  I  have  no  words  to 
offer  such  as  these.  But  other  good  persons,  with 
minds  less  firm  and  hearts  less  refined,  may  reflect 
with  advantage  to  themselves  concerning  the 
manners  and  the  state  of  mind  with  which  to 
travel. 


Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction. 


I  HAVE  heard  young  persons  who  contemplate 
writing  an  American  novel,  or  who  are  interested 
in  the  literature  of  this  country,  speak  of  the 
material  there  is  in  New  York  society  for  the 
writer  of  fiction.  It  seems  to  be  thought  that 
certain  people  living  among  us  may  be  made  to 
have,  as  members  of  society,  an  interest  separate 
from  that  we  feel  in  them  as  men  and  women. 
A  great  many  good  and  amusing  books  have  been 
written  about  London  and  Paris  society  ;  why  may 
not  such  books  be  written  about  New  York 
society  ?  Now  I  wish  to  show  that  there  is  no 
society  in  New  York  which  corresponds  to  that 
of  London  or  Paris,  and  that  any  writer  who 
attempts  to  make  the  idea  that  there  is  the  key- 
note of  his  work  will  be  likely  to  produce  a  silly, 


2 1 8     Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction,    [xvn. 

vulgar  book.  Apart  from  the  harm  to  the  writer 
of  such  a  misconception,  it  is  not  well  to  be  putting 
into  the  heads  of  people,  the  country  through, 
notions  which  have  no  actual  truth.  And  be  it 
observed  that  I  am  now  discussing  only  a  question 
of  fact  Whether  or  no  there  should  be  such 
societies,  or  whether,  where  they  exist,  they  do 
good  or  harm,  I  do  not  say.  I  only  say  that 
there  is  no  such  society  among  us,  and  that 
novelists  should  not  write  as  if  there  were.  But 
the  fact  is  not  of  literary  importance  only ;  if  it 
be  a  fact,  it  should  be  recognised  and  accepted  by 
the  country. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  discuss  this  subject 
without  some  reference  to  democracy,  the  triumph 
of  which  in  this  country  has  been  so  complete. 
There  are  yet  some  unreasonable  discriminations 
concerning  employments  among  us,  but  it  is 
certain  that  the  movement  of  public  sentiment 
has  been  strongly  and  rapidly  towards  democracy. 
There  was,  during  the  early  years  of  our  existence, 
an  approach  to  a  national  aristocratic  society  in 
this  country.  A  governor  or  a  senator,  a  judge, 
commodore,  or  a  general,  was  an  aristocrat.  Any- 


XVJL]    Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction.     219 

body  who  represented  or  reflected  the  dignity  of 
government  was  an  aristocrat.  This  feeling  con- 
tinued till  near  the  middle  of  the  century,  or  until 
the  second  generation  of  statesmen  had  dis- 
appeared. It  has  gone  now  "  where  the  woodbine 
twineth,"  to  use  the  significant  expression  of  the 
significant  Jim  Fisk.  The  extreme  weakness  of 
the  aristocratic,  element  among  us  at  present  is  in 
part — in  very  small  part — to  be  explained  by  the 
want  of  respect  in  our  people.  A  plain  man  in 
this  country  cares  nothing  for  the  man  who  is 
above  him;  is  rather  proud,  and  believes  it  to 
be  a  virtue,  that  he  does  not  care.  Nor  does 
it  appear  a  thing  to  be  regretted  that  such  a 
state  of  mind  exists  in  the  humbler  citizen  towards 
the  greater  one.  It  is  well  to  have  A  admire  B, 
if  B  is  a  person  of  superior  rectitude,  energy,  and 
intelligence.  But  what  advantage  will  it  be  to 
society  to  have  A  admire  B  because  B  lives  in 
a  better  house,  and  may  have  a  better  dinner 
than  A? 

There  is  no  need  to  put  the  cart  before  the 
horse.  The  value  of  veneration  among  the  masses 
of  men  is  obvious  where  they  have  anything  to 


220     Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction,    [xvn. 

venerate.  And  there  can  be  no  want  of  the 
capacity  for  respect  among  our  people.  Some 
story  now  and  then  is  told  which  discloses  the 
vast  reverence  in  which  Hamilton  and  Jefferson, 
and  later,  Clay  and  Webster,  were  held  by 
the  Americans  of  their  time.  "  Break  up  the 
great  Whig  party/'  said  Webster  on  one  occasion, 
"  and  where  am  I  to  go  ? "  I  remember  to  have 
heard  my  father,  who  was  an  old-line  Whig  and 
an  adherent  of  Webster,  say  that  Webster  admired 
Isaiah.  The  impression  made  upon  me  at  the 
time  was  very  distinct.  I  thought  how  conceited 
the  prophet  would  be  were  he  only  aware  of  the 
great  man's  eccentric  partiality. 

A  writer  has  spoken  of  this  country  as  one  in 
which  superiorities  are  neither  coveted  nor  re- 
spected. That  is  not  true ;  real  superiorities  are 
certainly  respected.  The  few  that  we  have  are, 
perhaps,  respected  too  much.  Americans  having 
acquired  the  just  idea  that  Mr.  Emerson  is  a  great 
man,  proceed  to  let  him  do  their  thinking  for  them. 
The  bulk  of  our  reading  people  know  enough  to 
recognise  what  is  excellent,  but  have  not  the 
critical  self-confidence  which  is  the  property  of 


xvii.]    Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction.     221 

educated  men.  They  therefore  fail  to  insist  upon 
the  fact  that  the  greatest  men  have  their  limita- 
tions and  .cannot  include  everything,  but  in  a  kind 
of  dazed  reverie,  like  that  of  a  patient  in  typhoid, 
accept  whatever  is  told  them.  So  it  is  not  true 
that  there  is  a  want  of  respect  among  people  in 
this  country  to  those  who  deserve  respect :  the 
contrary  is  the  fact 

The  national  aristocratic  society  has  disappeared 
with  the  disappearance  of  respect  for  the  politician. 
What  is  called  "  position "  is  in  this  country  now 
altogether  local.  This  is  necessarily  true.  A  is 
known  among  his  neighbours  as  a  rich  and  decent 
person ;  his  wife  and  daughters  are  "  nice "  (the 
American  for  "noble"),  either  absolutely  or  rela- 
tively to  the  people  about  them.  A  has  position, 
therefore,  in  his  own  town ;  if  he  moves  elsewhere 
he  does  not  inevitably  take  it  with  him.  Now,  in 
very  little  and  very  simple  communities,  these  ideas 
of  position  and  precedence  are  not  important.  In 
a  very  great  place,  on  the  other  hand,  few  men 
are  large  enough  to  be  seen  over  the  whole  town. 
As  a  consequence,  we  see  that  New  York  is 
perhaps  the  most  democratic  town  in  the  country. 


222     Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction,    [xvn. 

It  has  become  so  during  the  years  in  which  it 
has  been  shooting  into  a  position  of  such  national 
and  cosmopolitan  importance.  It  is  now  quite 
as  democratic  a  place  as  the  inevitable  varieties 
of  accident  and  talent  among  men  will  permit  it 
to  be.  The  artifice  of  exclusiveness,  which  is  sure 
to  succeed  in  a  smaller  place,  will  not  do  here. 
People  greatly  desire  to  do  what  they  find  difficult 
to  do.  They  do  not  care  at  all  to  do  what  they 
know  they  may  do.  Accordingly,  in  a  town,  or 
city  of  moderate  size,  the  people  who  wish  to  be 
thought  better  than  their  neighbours,  and  who  have 
some  little  advantages  to  start  with,  are  wise  to 
keep  to  themselves.  They  thus  prevent  their 
neighbours  from  finding  out  that  the  excluded 
and  the  exclusives  are  just  alike.  They  have  for 
their  ally  that  profound  want  of  confidence  of 
ordinary  people  in  their  own  perceptions.  But 
this  is  a  device  which  will  not  do  in  a  city  of  the 
size  and  wide-reaching  importance  of  New  York. 
What  will  some  mover  of  commerce  or  politics 
over  the  face  of  the  country  care  for  the  opinion 
of  the  gentlewoman  round  the  corner,  who  thinks 
him  vulgar  ? 


xvir.]    Society  in  New  York  and  Fiction.     223 

Thus  we  see  it  to  be  impossible  that  any  domi- 
nant society  may  exist  in  this  country.  The 
recognition  of  this  fact  should  teach  quiet  to  people 
inclined  to  be  restless.  It  need  not  be  unwelcome 
to  the  friend  of  man,  for  he  will  remember  that 
democracy  does  not  mean  the  triumph  of  utility 
over  dignity  and  refinement,  but  that  it  means 
dignity  and  refinement  for  the  many.  Writers  of 
fiction  may  regret  the  want  of  diversity  and 
picturesqueness  which  the  fact  involves,  but  it  is 
always  well  to  know  the  truth ;  if  they  desire  to 
avoid  vulgarity  and  the  waste  of  such  opportunities 
as  they  have,  they  must  heed  it.  To  make  men 
and  women  interesting  as  members  of  society  is 
denied  them ;  but  should  these  writers  have  the 
wit  to  paint  men  and  women  as  they  are,  the  field 
is  wide  enough.  There  are  on  all  sides  people  who 
are  charming  to  contemplate,  and  whom  it  should 
be  a  pleasure  to  describe. 


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*  These  six  volumes  are  issued  in  Cabinet  size  (16mo),  "Brightwood  Edition,"  at 
the  same  prices  as  above. 


HOURS  IN  A  LIBRARY. 

By    LESLIE    STEPHEN. 


One  rot.,  72mo,  cloth, 


THE  taking  title  of  this  volume  is  most  admirably  sustained  by 
Its  contents.  "  De  Foe's  Novels,"  "  Richardsoji's  Novels,"  "Pope 
as  a  Moralist,"  "Some  Words  about  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  "Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,"  "  Balzac's  Novels,"  and  "  De  Quincey,"  are  the  authors 
at:d  the  subjects  discussed.  No  recent  writer  has  developed  the  true 
critical  instinct  at  all  in  the  degree  which  this  volume  proves  that 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  possesses.it.  His  judgments  are  the  result  of 
the  closest  and  most  careful  study.  They  are,  moreover,  compre- 
hensive, and  are  expressed  in  a  style  so  incisive  and  brilliant  as  to 
place  their  author  in  the  front  rank  of  living  essayists. 

Estimate  of  the  "  Nation." 

"They  are  the  writings  of  a  thoroughly  sensible,  acute,  and  unpretentious  critic. 
Tlicy  read  like  the  conversations  of  a  clever,  well-educated  man,  and  thoughtless  readers 
may  overlook  the  fact  that  the  conversation  with  which  Mr.  Stephen  whiles  away  the 
hours  in  a  library  is  exactly  that  kind  of  'good  talk"  which,  as  every  one  knows  on 
reflection,  is  one  of  the  greatest  and,  at  the  same  time,  rarest  intellectual  enjoyments. 
Half  Mr.  Stephen's  readers,  perhaps,  think  they  could  talk  as  he  writes.  In  matter  of 
fact,  they  probably  could  not  sustain  for  ten  minutes  a  literary  conversation  of  which, 
were  it  printed  down,  they  would  not  be  heartily  ashamed  But  persons  who  would  find 
it  an  impossible  task  to  imitate  what  seems  in  Mr.  Stephen's  hands  so  easy  an  achieve- 
ment, may  yet  gain  a  great  deal  both  of  interest  and  instruction  from  his  essays.  Mr. 
Stephen's  great  merit,  in  our  judgment,  is  the  care  with  which  he  studies  the  objects  ol 
his  criticism,  and  the  skill  with  which  he  applies  to  them  the  calm  good-sense  of  a  well- 
educated,  clear-sighted  man,  who  possesses  just  that  kind  of  humor,  the  absence  of 
which  constantly  renders  worthless  the  meritorious  labors  of  industrious  critic*." 


Sent  postpaid,  on  receipt  of  the  price,  by  the  publishers, 

SCRIBNER,  ARMSTRONG  &  CO.,  NEW  YORK. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
Thii.book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


MAR  1 0  1972 


ORION 


Form  L9-Series  444 


DA 

688 

N12i 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000395358    5 


